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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 114:5 - 114:5
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The poet, when he asks, “What aileth thee, O sea, that thou fleest...?” lives and moves in this olden time as a contemporary, or the present and the olden time as it were flow together to his mind; hence the answer he himself gives to the question propounded takes the form of a triumphant mandate. The Lord, the God of Jacob, thus mighty in wondrous works, it is before whom the earth must tremble. אָדֹון does not take the article because it finds its completion in the following יַֽעֲקֹב (אֱלֹוהַּ); it is the same epizeuxis as in Psa 113:8; Psa 94:3; Psa 96:7, Psa 96:13. הַהֹפְכִי has the constructive ı̂ out of the genitival relation; and in לְמַעְיְנֹו in this relation we have the constructive ô, which as a rule occurs only in the genitival combination, with the exception of this passage and בְּנֹו בְאֹר, Num 24:3, Num 24:15 (not, however, in Pro 13:4, “his, the sluggard's, soul”), found only in the name for wild animals חַיְתֹו־אֶרֶץ, which occurs frequently, and first of all in Gen 1:24. The expression calls to mind Psa 107:35. הַצּוּר is taken from Exo 17:6; and חַלָּמִישׁ (lxx τὴν ἀκρότομον, that which is rugged, abrupt)
(Note: One usually compares Arab. chlnbûs, chalnabûs the Karaite lexicographer Abraham ben David writes חלמבוס]; but this obsolete word, as a compound from Arab. chls, to be black-grey, and Arab. chnbs, to be hard, may originally signify a hard black-grey stone, whereas חלמישׁ looks like a mingling of the verbal stems Arab. ḥms, to be hard, and Arab. ḥls, to be black-brown (as Arab. jlmûd, a detached block of rock, is of the verbal stems Arab. jld, to be hard, and Arab. jmd, to be massive). In Hauran the doors of the houses and the window-shutters are called Arab. ḥalasat when they consist of a massive slab of dolerite, probably from their blackish hue. Perhaps חלמישׁ is the ancient name for basalt; and in connection with the hardness of this form of rock, which resembles a mass of cast metal, the breaking through of springs is a great miracle. - Wetzstein. For other views vid., on Isa 49:21; Isa 50:7.)
stands, according to Deu 8:15, poetically for סֶלַע, Num 20:11, for it is these two histories of the giving of water to which the poet points back. But why to these in particular? The causing of water to gush forth out of the flinty rock is a practical proof of unlimited omnipotence and of the grace which converts death into life. Let the earth then tremble before the Lord, the God of Jacob. It has already trembled before Him, and before Him let it tremble. For that which He has been He still ever is; and as He came once, He will come again.