Psalm 114

This Psalm is a celebration of the exodus event. One of the roles of the psalms, and this is the case also with this one, was to help generation after generation remember and reflect on the acts of God in the past. God speaks through what God does and therefore he repeatedly tells his people to remember and not forget the things he has done for them (Deut. 8). Psalms like these were designed to make this possible in the most effective way that people had available to them, i.e. through the medium of music. And arguably it is still the most effective way to reflect on the things of God. Music encapsulates things in a way that makes them memorable but also communicates the emotive aspect of the events or truths. It is not just about history. It is about revelation. These events were remembered so that they could continue to elicit the response that God wanted to elicit from his people in the first place when he did these things. And so this psalm, after recalling the wonder of the things that happened during the time of the exodus, calls us to an attitude of reverent awe in the light of these things.