TREMBLE
John Calvin: The sea, in rendering such obedience to its Creator, sanctified His name; and Jordan, by its submission, put honor upon His power; and the mountains, by their quaking, proclaimed how they were overawed at the presence of His dreadful majesty.
The psalmist interrogates the sea, Jordan, and the mountains, in a familiar and poetical strain, as lately he ascribed to them a sense and reverence for God’s power. And, by these similitudes, he very sharply reproves the insensibility of those persons, who do not employ the intelligence which God has given them in the contemplation of His works. The appearance which he tells us the sea assumed, is more than sufficient to condemn their blindness.
Psalm 114:1-8
When Israel went out from Egypt,
the house of Jacob from a people of strange language,
Judah became his sanctuary,
Israel his dominion.
The sea looked and fled;
Jordan turned back.
The mountains skipped like rams,
the hills like lambs.
What ails you, O sea, that you flee?
O Jordan, that you turn back?
O mountains, that you skip like rams?
O hills, like lambs?
Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord,
at the presence of the God of Jacob,
who turns the rock into a pool of water,
the flint into a spring of water.
