Psalm Devotional
Tremble Before the Lord!
The theme of public praise continues in Psalm 114 as part of the Hallel, which means “the praise” (Psalms 113–118). It does not begin or end with “Praise the Lord!” as other psalms in this series, so some think that the last line of 113:9 was originally the first line of Psalm 114. There is no evidence for this. Nevertheless, the call of verse 7, “Tremble, O land, before the Lord,” indicates that this psalm is intended for the public praise of God.
With its theme of the Exodus, Psalm 114 is particularly appropriate for use in the Passover. All the psalms of The Hallel were used in the Passover, as well as in the feasts of Weeks, Booths, New Moon and Dedication.
The beauty and power of this psalm has been long and widely recognized. It is very skillfully arranged with strong and purposeful parallelism in each verse, and inverted parallelism in its four sections, namely: (A) Exodus; (B) nature’s response; (B) nature’s response; (A) Exodus. A very striking feature is the antiphony between references to the Lord’s bringing Israel out of Egypt (Exodus) and His bringing Israel into the promised land (Eisodus). The point is that the Lord brought His people out of Egypt in order to bring them into Canaan (Deut. 6:23). Two other striking features are the lack of an antecedent for “His” in verse two and the inquiry of verses five and six. In these two things, it seems that the psalmist is hiding the Lord’s role in all the wonders of the Exodus and Eisodus in order to reveal Him suddenly and powerfully at the end of the psalm.
