Psalm 114

1 When Israel came out of Egypt,
Jacob from a people of foreign tongue,
2 Judah became God’s sanctuary,
Israel his dominion.

So much of the message of the psalms is memory: remember Israel’s story.

Jacob was the patriarch who was given a new name by the Lord: Israel. Jacob/Israel had 12 sons, who became over the centuries the 12 Tribes of Israel.

When Israel was enslaved among the Egyptians—”people of a foreign tongue”—the Lord brought them out. Judah was one of the tribes—the one that settled in Jerusalem and the one from whom David came.

3 The sea looked and fled,
the Jordan turned back;
4 the mountains leaped like rams,
the hills like lambs.

5 Why was it, sea, that you fled?
    Why, Jordan, did you turn back?
6 Why, mountains, did you leap like rams,
    you hills, like lambs?

The psalmist imagines the glory of God leading the the Israelites across the River Jordan into the Promised Land. It was as if, says the psalmist, nature itself was awed and cowed by God’s power on behalf of Israel.

7 Tremble, earth, at the presence of the Lord,
at the presence of the God of Jacob,
8 who turned the rock into a pool,
the hard rock into springs of water.

Here the psalmist references the famous story of how as Israel wandered in the desert, the Lord brought water up out of the rock for them.

What should be instructive for us is how many of the psalms retell over and over again the stories of how the Lord blesses his people.

What past blessings do you need to specifically praise God for today?