Verse 1. When Israel went out of Egypt. The song begins with a burst, as if the poetic fury could
not be restrained, but overleaped all bounds. The soul elevated and filled with
a sense of divine glory cannot wait to fashion a preface, but springs at once
into the middle of its theme. Israel emphatically came out of Egypt, out of the
population among whom they had been scattered, from under the yoke of bondage,
and from under the personal grasp of the king who had made the people into
national slaves. Israel came out with a high hand and a stretched-out arm,
defying all the power of the empire, and making the whole of Egypt to travail
with sore anguish, as the chosen nation was, as it were, born out of its midst.
The house of Jacob from a people of strange language. They had gone down
into Egypt as a single family—“the house of Jacob”—and, though they had
multiplied greatly, they were still so united, and were so fully regarded by
God as a single unit, that they are rightly spoken of as the house of Jacob.
They were as one in their willingness to leave Goshen; numerous as they were,
not a single individual stayed behind. Unanimity is a pleasing token of the
divine presence, and one of its sweetest fruits.
Verse 2. The
pronoun his comes in where we should have looked for the name of God;
but the poet is so full of thought concerning the Lord that he forgets to
mention his name. From the mention of Judah and Israel certain critics have
inferred that this psalm must have been written after the division of the two
kingdoms; but this is only another instance of the extremely slender basis upon
which an hypothesis is often built up. Before the formation of the two kingdoms
David had said, “Go number Israel and Judah,” and this was common parlance,
for Uriah the Hittite said, “The ark, and Israel, and Judah abide in tents”;
so nothing can be inferred from the use of the two names. The meaning of the
passage is that the whole people at the coming out of Egypt were separated unto
the Lord to be a peculiar people, a nation of priests whose motto should be “Holiness
unto the Lord.” Judah was the Lord’s “holy thing,” set apart for his special
use. The nation was especially Jehovah’s dominion, for it was governed by a
theocracy in which God alone was King. It was his domain in a sense in which
the rest of the world was outside his kingdom. These were the young days of
Israel, the time of her espousals, when she went after the Lord into the
wilderness, her God leading the way with signs and miracles. The whole people
were the shrine of Deity, and their camp was one great temple. What a change
there must have been for the godly amongst them from the idolatries and
blasphemies of the Egyptians to the holy worship and righteous rule of the
great King in Jeshurun. They lived in a world of wonders, where God was seen in
the wondrous bread they ate and in the water they drank, as well as in the
solemn worship of his holy place. When the Lord is manifestly present in a
church, and his gracious rule obediently owned, what a golden age has come, and
what honorable privileges his people enjoy! May it be so among us.
Verse 3. The sea saw it, and fled; or rather, “The sea saw and fled”—it saw God and all his
people following his lead, and it was struck with awe and fled away. A bold
figure! The Red Sea mirrored the hosts which had come down to its shore, and
reflected the cloud which towered high over all, as the symbol of the presence
of the Lord: never had such a scene been imaged upon the surface of the Red
Sea, or any other sea, before. It could not endure the unusual and astounding
sight, and fleeing to the right and to the left, opened a passage for the elect
people. A like miracle happened at the end of the great march of Israel, for Jordan
was driven back. This was a swiftly-flowing river, pouring itself down a
steep decline, and it was not merely divided, but its current was driven back
so that the rapid torrent, contrary to nature, flowed uphill. This was God’s
work: the poet does not sing of the suspension of natural laws, or of a
singular phenomenon not readily to be explained; but to him the presence of God
with his people is everything, and in his lofty song he tells how the river was
driven back because the Lord was there. In this case poetry is nothing but the
literal fact, and the fiction lies on the side of the atheistic critics who
will suggest any explanation of the miracle rather than admit that the Lord
made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all his people. The division of the sea
and the drying up of the fiver are placed together though forty years
intervened, because they were the opening and closing scenes of one great
event. We may thus unite by faith our new birth and our departure out of the
world into the promised inheritance, for the God who led us out of the Egypt of
our bondage under sin will also conduct us through the Jordan of death out of
our wilderness wanderings in the desert of this tried and changeful life. It is
all one and the same deliverance, and the beginning ensures the end.
Verse 4. At the
coming of the Lord to Mount Sinai, the hills moved; either leaping for joy in
the presence of their Creator like young lambs, or, if you will, springing from
their places in affright at the terrible majesty of Jehovah, and flying like a
flock of sheep when alarmed. Men fear the mountains, but the mountains tremble
before the Lord. Sheep and lambs move lightly in the meadows; but the hills,
which we are wont to call eternal, were as readily made to move as the most
active creatures.
Verse 5. What ailed thee, O sea? Were you terribly afraid? Did your strength fail you? Did
your very heart dry up? That thou fleddest? You were neighbor to the
power of Pharaoh, but you never feared his hosts; stormy wind could never
prevail against you so as to divide you in two; but when the way of the Lord
was in your great waters you were seized with affright, and became a fugitive
from before him. Thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back? Your fountains
had not dried up, neither had a chasm opened to engulf you! The near approach
of Israel and her God sufficed to make you retrace your steps. What ails all
our enemies that they fly when the Lord is on our side? What ails hell itself
that it is utterly routed when Jesus lifts up a standard against it?
Verse 6. What
ailed you that you were thus moved? There is but one reply: the majesty of God
made you leap. A gracious mind will chide human nature for its strange
insensibility, when the sea and the river, the mountains and the hills, are all
sensitive to the presence of God. Man is endowed with reason and intelligence,
and yet sees unmoved that which the material creation beholds with fear. God
has come nearer to us than ever he did to Sinai, or to Jordan, for he has
assumed our nature, and yet the mass of mankind are neither driven back from
their sins nor moved in the paths of obedience.
Verse 7. Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the
presence of the God of Jacob.
Or “from before the Lord, the Adonai, the Master and King.” Very fitly does
the psalm call upon all nature again to feel a holy awe because its Ruler is
still in its midst.
Verse 8. Which turned the rock into a standing water, causing a lake to stand at its foot, making the wilderness
a pool: so abundant was the supply of water from the rock that it remained like
water in a reservoir. The flint into a fountain of waters, which flowed
freely in streams, following the tribes in their devious marches. Behold what
God can do! It seemed impossible that the flinty rock should become a fountain;
but he speaks, and it is done.
Our deliverance from under the yoke of sin is strikingly
typified in the going up of Israel from Egypt, and so also was the victory of
our Lord over the powers of death and hell. The Exodus should therefore be
earnestly remembered by Christian hearts. Did not Moses on the mount of
transfiguration speak to our Lord of “the exodus” which he would shortly
accomplish at Jerusalem? And is it not written of the hosts above that they
sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and of the Lamb? Do we not ourselves
expect another coming of the Lord, when before his face heaven and earth will
flee away and there will be no more sea? We join then with the singers around
the Passover table and make their Hallel ours, for we too have been led out of
bondage and guided like a flock through a desert land, wherein the Lord
supplies our wants with heavenly manna and water from the Rock of Ages.
Excerpt from:
The Treasury of David
By Charles H Spurgeon
