1.
When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language;
(1) When Israel went out.—LXX., in “the Exodus of Israel.”
A people of strange language.—LXX., rightly, “a barbarous people.” Since the Hebrew word, like the Greek, implies a certain scorn or ridicule, which ancient races generally had for those speaking another language. To this day the Russians call the Germans “dumb.”
2.
Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion.
(2) Judah was.—Better, became. The feminine verb shows that the country is intended, and not the tribe, and the parallelism directs us to think not of the territory of the tribe of Judah alone, but of the whole country. Notice the art with which the name of God is reserved, and the simple pronoun, His, used. (Comp. Exodus 19:6.)
3.
The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back.
(3) Fled.—The Authorised Version weakens the effect by rendering “it was driven back.” (See Joshua 3:16.) The scene presented is of the “descending stream” (the words employed seem to have a special reference to that peculiar and most significant name of the “Jordan”) not parted asunder, as we generally fancy, but, as the psalm expresses it, “turned backwards” (Stanley, Jewish Church, i. 229).
4.
The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.
(4) Skipped.—The Hebrew word thus rendered is translated “dance” in Ecclesiastes 3:4. (See Psalms 18:7.) Exodus 19:18 was no doubt in the poet’s thought, but the leaping of the hills formed part of every theophany.
5.
What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back?
6.
Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills, like lambs?
7.
Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob;
(7) Tremble.—Literally, be in travail. This answer to his question is introduced with consummate art. Well may the mountains tremble, when it is the Lord of all the earth, the God of Jacob, who is present. Notice that till now the mention of the Divine power which wrought the deliverance was kept in suspense.
8.
Which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters.