Psalm 74:15

Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood: thou driedst up mighty rivers.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(15) Thou didst cleave . . .—Another pregnant expression for “thou didst cleave the rock, and a fountain came forth.”

Flood.—Better, brook. Heb., nāchal.

Mighty rivers.—See margin. But, perhaps, rather. rivers of constant flow, that did not dry up in summer like the “brooks.” The same word is used of the sea (Exodus 14:27), to express the return to the regular flow of the tide.

The verb “driest up” is that used (Joshua 2:10) of the Red Sea, and Joshua 4:23; Joshua 5:1 of the Jordan.

Benson Commentary

Psalm 74:15. Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood — That is, thou didst, by cleaving the rock, make a fountain in it, and a flood or stream to flow from it, for the refreshment of thy people in those dry deserts. Thou driedst up mighty rivers — Hebrew, נהרות איתןrivers of strength. The Seventy, however, render it, ποταμους ηθαμ, taking the latter word, eethan, for a proper name. Undoubtedly Jordan is meant: so that “two other remarkable exertions of the divine power, in favour of the Israelites, are here referred to. Water was brought out of the rock to satisfy their thirst in the time of drought; and the river Jordan was dried up to open the passage for them into Canaan.”

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

74:12-17 The church silences her own complaints. What God had done for his people, as their King of old, encouraged them to depend on him. It was the Lord's doing, none besides could do it. This providence was food to faith and hope, to support and encourage in difficulties. The God of Israel is the God of nature. He that is faithful to his covenant about the day and the night, will never cast off those whom he has chosen. We have as much reason to expect affliction, as to expect night and winter. But we have no more reason to despair of the return of comfort, than to despair of day and summer. And in the world above we shall have no more changes.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood - That is, the source of the streams and the streams themselves. The main allusion is probably to the Jordan, and the idea is, that God had, as it were, divided all the waters, or prevented any obstruction to his people from the river in any respect; as if the waters in the very springs and fountains, and the waters in the channel of the river flowing from those springs and fountains, had been so restrained and divided that there was a safe passage through them. Joshua 3:14-17.

Thou driedst up mighty rivers - Margin, "rivers of strength." The Hebrew - איתן 'êythân - (compare Deuteronomy 21:4; Amos 5:24; 1 Kings 8:2) - means rather perennial, constant, ever-flowing. The allusion is to rivers or streams that flow constantly, or that do not dry up. It was this which made the miracle so apparent. It could not be pretended that they had gone over the bed of a stream which was accustomed to be dry at certain seasons of the year. They passed over rivers that never dried up; and, therefore, it could have been only by miracle. The main allusion is undoubtedly to the passage of the Jordan.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

15. cleave the fountain—that is, the rocks of Horeb and Kadesh; for fountains.

driedst up—Jordan, and, perhaps, Arnon and Jabbok (Nu 21:14).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood, i.e. thou didst by cleaving the rock make a fountain in it, and a flood or stream to flow from it, for the refreshment of thy people in those dry deserts. The phrase is like that Isaiah 47:2, grind meal, i.e. by grinding the corn make meal.

Mighty rivers; either,

1. Jordan, which was then more mighty than ordinarily, as having overflowed all his banks, and therefore may be called rivers, because it was now equivalent to two or three such rivers; or it is only an ensilage of the plural number for the singular, whereof I have given many instances formerly. Or rather,

2. Both Jordan and the Red Sea; for the sea itself, yea, a greater sea than that, is called a river, Jonah 2:3; for the Hebrew word is the same which is here used, though there it be rendered floods. And the same title is expressly given to the sea by Homer and other ancient writers. To these the ancient Chaldee interpreter addeth the rivers of Amen and Jabbok, in or about which some extraordinary work was wrought, yea, something which was like God’s work at the Red Sea, as may seem by the conjunction of these together, Numbers 21:14.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood,.... That is, the rocks at Horeb and at Kadesh, from whence water flowed as out of a fountain, and became a flood, whereby the people of Israel were supplied with water in the wilderness, and also their beasts; and from this instance it may be concluded that God will not leave his people, nor suffer them to want, but will supply all their need while they are in the wilderness, and will open fountains and rivers for them, Isaiah 41:17 he himself is a fountain of living water; Christ is the fountain of gardens, and the Spirit and his grace a well of living water springing up unto everlasting life:

thou driedst up mighty rivers; the river of Jordan, called "mighty", as Kimchi says, because by its strength it overflowed all its banks and "rivers", and because other rivers flowed into it; this was dried up, or way was made through it, as on dry land, for the people of Israel to pass into Canaan, Joshua 3:14, the Targum is,

"thou hast dried up the fords and brooks of Hermon, and the fords of Jabbok and Jordan;''

see Numbers 21:14, and the Lord, that did this, is able to dry up, and will dry up, the river Euphrates, as is foretold, Revelation 16:12, that is, destroy the Turkish empire, and make way for the spread of the Gospel in the eastern parts of the world; to which reference is had in Isaiah 11:15.

Geneva Study Bible

Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood: thou driedst up mighty rivers.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

15. Thou didst cleave fountain and torrent:

Thou didst dry up perennial rivers.

God’s omnipotence was shewn alike in cleaving the rock so that water flowed out (Exodus 17:6; Numbers 20:8; Psalm 78:15; Isaiah 48:21), and in drying up the perennial stream of the Jordan (Joshua 3; Joshua 4:23).

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 15. - Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood; rather, and the torrent (comp. Exodus 17:6; Numbers 20:11). Thou driedst up mighty rivers; i.e. the Jordan (Joshua 3:13, et seqq.). Psalm 74:15

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

With this prayer for the destruction of the enemies by God's interposition closes the first half of the Psalm, which has for its subject-matter the crying contradiction between the present state of things and God's relationship to Israel. The poet now draws comfort by looking back into the time when God as Israel's King unfolded the rich fulness of His salvation everywhere upon the earth, where Israel's existence was imperilled. בּקרב הארץ, not only within the circumference of the Holy Land, but, e.g., also within that of Egypt (Exodus 8:18-22). The poet has Egypt directly in his mind, for there now follows first of all a glance at the historical (Psalm 74:13-15), and then at the natural displays of God's power (Psalm 74:16, Psalm 74:17). Hengstenberg is of opinion that Psalm 74:13-15 also are to be understood in the latter sense, and appeals to Job 26:11-13. But just as Isaiah (Isaiah 51:9, cf. Psalm 27:1) transfers these emblems of the omnipotence of God in the natural world to His proofs of power in connection with the history of redemption which were exhibited in the case of a worldly power, so does the poet here also in Psalm 74:13-15. The תּנּיּן (the extended saurian) is in Isaiah, as in Ezekiel (התּנּים, Psalm 29:3; Psalm 32:2), an emblem of Pharaoh and of his kingdom; in like manner here the leviathan is the proper natural wonder of Egypt. As a water-snake or a crocodile, when it comes up with its head above the water, is killed by a powerful stroke, did God break the heads of the Egyptians, so that the sea cast up their dead bodies (Exodus 14:30). The ציּים, the dwellers in the steppe, to whom these became food, are not the Aethiopians (lxx, Jerome), or rather the Ichthyophagi (Bocahrt, Hengstenberg), who according to Agatharcides fed ἐκ τῶν ἐκριπτομένων εἰς τὴν χέρσον κητῶν, but were no cannibals, but the wild beasts of the desert, which are called עם, as in Proverbs 30:25. the ants and the rock-badgers. לציים is a permutative of the notion לעם, which was not completed: to a (singular) people, viz., to the wild animals of the steppe. Psalm 74:15 also still refers not to miracles of creation, but to miracles wrought in the course of the history of redemption; Psalm 74:15 refers to the giving of water out of the rock (Psalm 78:15), and Psalm 74:15 to the passage through the Jordan, which was miraculously dried up (הובשׁתּ, as in Joshua 2:10; Joshua 4:23; Joshua 5:1). The object מעין ונחל is intended as referring to the result: so that the water flowed out of the cleft after the manner of a fountain and a brook. נהרות are the several streams of the one Jordan; the attributive genitive איתן describe them as streams having an abundance that does not dry up, streams of perennial fulness. The God of Israel who has thus marvellously made Himself known in history is, however, the Creator and Lord of all created things. Day and night and the stars alike are His creatures. In close connection with the night, which is mentioned second, the moon, the מאור of the night, precedes the sun; cf. Psalm 8:4, where כּונן is the same as הכין in this passage. It is an error to render thus: bodies of light, and more particularly the sun; which would have made one expect מאורות before the specializing Waw. גּבוּלות are not merely the bounds of the land towards the sea, Jeremiah 5:22, but, according to Deuteronomy 32:8; Acts 17:26, even the boundaries of the land in themselves, that is to say, the natural boundaries of the inland country. קיץ וחרף are the two halves of the year: summer including spring (אביב), which begins in Nisan, the spring-month, about the time of the vernal equinox, and autumn including winter (צתו), after the termination of which the strictly spring vegetation begins (Sol 2:11). The seasons are personified, and are called God's formations or works, as it were the angels of summer and of winter.