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When Nature Ran.

Psalms 114 — The day creation got out of the way

3 min read

Key Takeaways

The poet doesn't just retell the Exodus — he heckles the ocean, taunts the mountains, and demands that nature explain why it panicked.

Freedom wasn't the destination — it was the starting line. God's real goal was turning a community of former slaves into his dwelling place.
God doesn't just remove obstacles — he transforms solid rock into a flowing spring, turning the thing in the way into the thing that sustains life.

📢 Chapter 114 — When Nature Ran 🌊

Eight verses. That's it. And this might be the most vivid thing in the entire book of .

It's part of a set sung at for thousands of years. Instead of retelling the with characters and plot, the poet tells the whole story from nature's perspective — and every part of it is panicking.

Inside this Chapter

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The Moment Everything Changed 🔓

The poet opens with a single, loaded sentence — the moment walked out of :

When Israel walked out of Egypt, the house of Jacob leaving behind a people whose language they didn't even speak — Judah became God's sanctuary. Israel became his domain.

They walk out of captivity and don't just become free — they become the place where lives. His wasn't a building or a . It was a people. God chose to make his home not in a location, but in a community. wasn't the destination — it was the starting line. The real story was what they were becoming: the dwelling place of God himself.

Creation Clears the Room 👀

Now the poet turns the camera toward nature:

The sea looked — and ran. The Jordan turned around and went the other way. The mountains skipped like rams. The hills jumped like lambs.

Then he talks directly to nature, almost taunting it:

What happened to you, sea? Why did you run? Jordan — why did you turn back? Mountains, why were you skipping like rams? Hills, like lambs?

He's heckling the ocean — making fun of enormous, immovable mountains for bouncing around like baby sheep. This isn't stiff religious poetry. This is a writer delighted by what happened. But underneath the playfulness is something staggering. The did split. The did stop flowing. The ground at did shake. Nature had no choice — something bigger walked into the room, and everything that seemed permanent suddenly wasn't.

The Reason Everything Trembles ⛰️

The poet stops taunting and goes serious:

Tremble, earth — at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turns solid rock into a pool of water, flint into a flowing spring.

doesn't just move obstacles — he transforms them. The hardest, driest thing you can find — solid rock — becomes a source of . The thing in the way becomes the thing that sustains.

The sea didn't run because it was afraid of . It ran because it recognized who was walking with them.