Psalms 114

When Israel came out of Egypt, when the family of Jacob left a people whose language they did not know,

1When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language;

NoteThe exodus: the departure of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, the founding event of Israel's national story. "The family of Jacob" means the nation descended from Jacob, also called Israel, the same man is given both names in Genesis, and both names are used for his descendants. The King James "strange language" means foreign, not odd; the Hebrew describes a people whose speech was unintelligible to them.

2Judah became God's holy place, and Israel became the land he ruled.

2Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion.

Note"Judah" and "Israel" here are a matched poetic pair, two names for the same people, not two separate kingdoms. A sanctuary is a holy place, a dwelling set apart for a god; the line says the nation itself became the place where God lived. "Dominion" means the territory a ruler holds.

3The sea saw it and ran away. The Jordan River turned back.

3The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back.

NoteTwo separate events, forty years apart. The sea is the one Israel crossed when it escaped Egypt, which drew back to let them through. The Jordan is the river they crossed a generation later, entering the land of Canaan; its water is described as stopping and piling up so they could walk over. The poem sets the two crossings side by side as the opening and closing of the same journey.

4The mountains jumped like rams, and the small hills jumped like lambs.

4The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.

NoteMountains shaking is the standard way Hebrew poetry describes a god arriving, the language echoes accounts of Mount Sinai quaking during the giving of the law. "Skipped like rams" is a deliberately startling image: massive things behaving like frisking animals.

5What was the matter with you, sea, that you ran away? And with you, Jordan, that you turned back?

5What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back?

6What was the matter with you, mountains, that you jumped like rams, and you small hills, that you jumped like lambs?

6Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills, like lambs?

7Shake, earth, before the Lord, before the God of Jacob.

7Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob;

NoteThe Hebrew verb translated "tremble" means to writhe or whirl, and is used both of shaking in fear and of dancing; the ambiguity is in the original. "The presence of the Lord" repeated twice is a Hebrew way of intensifying, roughly "at the very presence."

8He is the one who turned the rock into a pool of water, and turned the hard stone into a flowing spring.

8Which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters.

NoteA reference to the desert story in which water came out of a rock when it was struck, giving the people something to drink. "Flint" is a hard stone that will not absorb or hold water, the point of naming it is that this is the least likely material for a spring.