Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalms 114:1

Whole Psalm. The 114th psalm appears to me to be an admirable ode, and I began to turn it into our own language. As I was describing the journey of Israel from Egypt, and added the Divine Presence amongst them, I perceived a beauty in this psalm, which was entirely new to me, and which I was going to lose; and that is, that the poet utterly conceals the presence of God in the beginning of it, and rather lets a possessive pronoun go without a substantive, than he will so much as mention anything of divinity there. "Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion" or kingdom. The reason now seems evident, and this conduct necessary; for, if God had appeared before, there could be no wonder why the mountains should leap and the sea retire; therefore, that this convulsion of nature may be brought in with due surprise, his name is not mentioned till afterwards; and then with a very agreeable turn of thought, God is introduced at once in all his majesty. This is what I have attempted to imitate in a translation without paraphrase, and to preserve what I could of the spirit of the sacred author.

When Israel, freed from Pharaoh's hand,

Left the proud tyrant and his land,

The tribes with cheerful homage own

Their King, and Judah was his throne.

Across the deep their journey lay,

The deep divides to make them way;

The streams of Jordan saw, and fled

With backward current to their head.

The mountains shook like frightened sheep,

Like lambs the little hillocks leap;

Not Sinai on her base could stand,

Conscious of sovereign power at hand.

What power could make the deep divide?

Make Jordan backward roll his tide?

Why did ye leap, ye little hills?

And whence the fright that Sinai feels?

Let every mountain, and every flood,

Retire, and know the approaching God,

The King of Israel! see him here:

Tremble, thou earth, adore and fear.

He thunders —and all nature mourns;

The rock to standing pools he turns;

Flints spring with fountains at his word,

And fires and seas confess their Lord. —Isaac Watts, in "The Spectator," 1712.

When Israel went out of Egypt. Out of the midst of that nation, that is, out of the bowels of the Egyptians, who had, as it were, devoured them; thus the Jew doctors gloss upon this text. —John Trapp.