Joyful invitation to faith
Returning from exile, the Jews were marginalized and looked down on in their own land, much like Christians in the West today. This psalm reminds them of who their God is and, wonderfully, does so with playfulness, not anger.
1 Praise YHWH!
When Israel came out of Egypt—
when Jacob’s family escaped
from a people babbling in a strange tongue—
2 Judah became his sanctuary
and Israel his domain.
3 The sea saw it and bolted
the Jordan River turned tail and ran.
4 The mountains jumped like rams
and the hills skipped like lambs.
5 What was wrong with you, sea
that you bolted?
And you, Jordan
that you ran away?
6 Why, mountains
did you jump like rams
and you, hills, skip like lambs?
7 Tremble, Earth, before YHWH!
Tremble before the God of Jacob!
8 He turned solid rock into a pool of water
stubborn stone into a gushing spring.
Returning from exile, the Jews were bullied by pagan neighbors and overlords alike. This made praising YHWH a subversive act. The psalmist reminds her hearers of the Exodus, Israel’s signature story, and other stories from the journey to Canaan to exalt YHWH.[1] And she does so with playful pugnacity, by ridiculing the river, sea, mountains, and hills and then calling the earth to submit to Israel’s omnipotent God.*
Instead of saying what terrified the waters and made the mountains quake, the psalmist taunts them, leaving them mute before her taunts. As we join her taunting, we relish the resultant silence. Only when the earth is commanded to tremble, do we see what overwhelmed it in the Exodus and why the psalmist praises YHWH.[2] But since these stories were Israel’s best-known stories, the psalmist’s hearers knew the secret all along, dramatic irony making her jibes livelier and more fun.
Ironically, the Israelites were panic-stricken at the sea, but the psalmist doesn’t mention that. Rather, she sees the sea panicking at YHWH’s coming, and the Jordan likewise. These images imply that YHWH, not Baal, controls earth’s wind and waves. The mountains’ quaking alludes to YHWH’s descent at Sinai, the hills’ quaking to his arrival at Jericho.[3] These images also evoke the region’s pagan mountain and hilltop shrines, implying that YHWH rules them too. Hence, the only reasonable thing for the Earth to do is submit to YHWH.
The psalmist begins with the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt’s confusion to the serenity and order of God’s rule in the wilderness. This addresses her people’s current plight: released from exile in Babylon, they now struggle to believe God really cares for them in their wilderness of a homeland. Recounting God’s provision of water in the desert, the psalmist assures them God’s power and care for his people isn’t in doubt.[4] He’s on Jacob’s side, is as compassionate as he is powerful, and fully deserves their trust.[5]
Prayer:
Lord, you defeated all the powers of darkness dehumanizing your people in Egypt. And Jesus, you defeated evil itself in your death-and-resurrection Exodus. When I feel powerless against the evil around me, help me believe you have absolute agency and you live in me. Amen.
In your free moments today, meditate on these words:
Tremble, Earth, before YHWH!
Tremble before the God of Jacob!
* I imagine the psalmist here as a woman of faith, like Miriam, Deborah, Hanna, or the Virgin Mary (see further: Who wrote the psalms?).
[1] Exod. 14; Josh. 3.
[2] My paraphrase moves Psalm 113’s final “Praise YHWH” to the start of this psalm for three reasons. First, it fixes a grammatical mistake no writer ever makes: using a pronoun (“his,” v. 2) without first saying who they’re talking about. Hebrew pronouns needed antecedents, just as English pronouns do. Second, the Psalms compiler included this psalm in the book’s Hallel (Praise) Psalms and, uncorrected, it’s the only psalm here without an explicit call to praise. Third, moving a verse from the beginning of one psalm to the end of the previous one was a very easy mistake for a copyist to make.
[3] Exod. 19:18. While Joshua’s account of the fall of Jericho doesn’t mention an earthquake, the collapse of the city walls quite likely involved one (Josh. 6:20).
[4] Exod. 17:1-7.
[5] The psalm’s chiasm is as follows: A. The God of the Exodus deserves our praise (v. 1); B. YHWH’s presence and rule in Israel (v. 2); C. THE LAND AND SEA’S SUBMISSION TO YHWH (vv. 3-4); C. THE LAND AND SEA’S SUBMISSION TO YHWH (vv. 5-6); B. YHWH’s presence and rule over the Earth (v. 7); A. The God of the wilderness deserves our trust (v. 8).
