Skip to Content
intertextual.bible
Go to Related Reading
About this book

Psalms

About this book
Psalm 114

1 When Israel left Egypt, when the family of Jacob left a foreign nation behind, 2 Judah became his sanctuary, Israel his kingdom. 3 The sea looked and fled; the Jordan River turned back.⁠ 4 The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs. 5 Why do you flee, O sea? Why do you turn back, O Jordan River? 6 Why do you skip like rams, O mountains, like lambs, O hills? 7 Tremble, O earth, before the Lord—before the God of Jacob,⁠ 8 who turned a rock into a pool of water, a hard rock into springs of water.⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare Deuteronomy 8:15 and Psalm 114:8

Hebrew Bible

Share:

Summary

Deuteronomy 8 recalls the wilderness as a dangerous place where God brought water from rock to sustain Israel and teach humility. Psalm 114 reshapes this tradition by describing the rock itself turning into water.

Passages

Deuteronomy 8:15

Hebrew Bible
13 when your cattle and flocks increase, when you have plenty of silver and gold, and when you have abundance of everything, 14 be sure you do not feel self-important and forget the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery, 15 and who brought you through the great, fearful wilderness of venomous serpents and scorpions, an arid place with no water. He made water flow from hard rock and 16 fed you in the wilderness with manna (which your ancestors had never before known) so that he might by humbling you test you and eventually bring good to you. 17 Be careful not to say, “My own ability and skill have gotten me this wealth.”
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

Psalm 114:8

Hebrew Bible
3 The sea looked and fled; the Jordan River turned back. 4 The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs. 5 Why do you flee, O sea? Why do you turn back, O Jordan River? 6 Why do you skip like rams, O mountains, like lambs, O hills? 7 Tremble, O earth, before the Lord—before the God of Jacob, 8 who turned a rock into a pool of water, a hard rock into springs of water.
600–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Psalms

References

"... In this last couplet of verses, a parallel is clearly established between the skipping of the mountains / hills (verse 6) and the liquid element (verse 8). In parallel to the pair (5/7) of verses, it seems that this pair ensures that the mountains will also liquefy in the future. This point is confirmed by the use of the term ההפכי in verse 8, a participial form transforming the time frame. As stressed by Adele Berlin, “the time frame is no longer in the past but is now tenseless-timeless, suggesting that the God who changed the natural world before will change it again.” Such an interpretation, together with the previous considerations about the melting dimension of the epiphany of YHWH, invites us to reconsider the interpretation of verse 8. The transformation of rock into water is traditionally understood as the supply of drinkable water. This interpretation is supported by the parallel use, in the context of the divine supply of water to the Israelites, of the terms rock (צור) and flint (חלמיש) both in Psalm 114:8 and in Deuteronomy 8:15 ... However, this interpretation does not account for the strong differences between them: in Deuteronomy 8:15, YHWH is bringing out (המוציא) waters from the rock, while in Psalm 114:8, YHWH turns/transforms (ההופכי) the rock into waters. This difference is notable since the verb הפך is never used elsewhere in the Bible to relate to the springing of drinkable water from the rock ..."
Nissim Amzallag and Mikhal Avriel, “The Canonic Responsa Reading of Psalm 114 and Its Theological Significance,” OTE 24.2 (2011): 303–323.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

Your feedback

Deuteronomy 8:15 and Psalm 114:8

Leave a comment

Your questions and comments are welcome!

Comments

Glossary

Search the Library