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I. THE APPELLATION GIVEN TO JEHOVAH. The term Jeshurun is a collective term used, just as Israel, Jacob, etc., to designate the covenant people — the people who, like Israel of old, have received a Divine call to come out from the world and be separate; who, in obedience to this Divine call, have separated themselves unto the Lord, and have entered into a solemn and public covenant with Him in which they have engaged to be His, and in which He has been graciously pleased to receive them, so that they now constitute His peculium. Jeshurun is, in other words, a symbolical designation of the Church. The text, therefore, represents God as sustaining to those who are members of the Church a relation that He does not and cannot sustain to one who is outside its fold. But there must be special reason for using this particular term to designate the Church. Viewed etymologically we find Jeshurun seems to be the plural diminutive of the word upright. It may, therefore, probably be best translated the children of uprightness. This is God's designation of the Church, indicative of its true character and mission in the world. Its mission is through the power of Divine grace to set upright that which has fallen. Its first work is to lift truth out of the dust; to free it from the incubus of error and superstition under which it has been borne down; to vindicate it, to defend it against all assaults of error, and to preserve it pure from all the inventions and sophistries of men. Broader, even yet, is the mission of the Church in establishing and maintaining uprightness in the earth. It is designed of God to be the great conservator of virtue, the great bulwark of morality, the efficient safeguard of the rights and liberties, of the intelligence and virtue, of the beneficence and charity that now beautify and gladden the world.

II. THE ACTION ASCRIBED TO JEHOVAH. "Who rideth upon the heaven." It is the same bold figure, so often used by the inspired Psalmist, as when he represents Jehovah as "making the clouds His chariot," or as "riding upon the wings of the wind." It is the glory of natural law that it is the power which God wields, the chariot upon which God rides. The more majestic modern science shows it to be, the more do our hearts rejoice in it as a fitting vehicle for the triumphant progress of our King. Let the agnostic blindly worship the material chariot if he will, his eye dazzled with the effulgence of its glittering wheels, and his ear fascinated with its music as it glides over the celestial pavement; be it ours to pay our homage to Him who rides upon it, whose eye of intelligence looks down into ours, whose heart of love beats in sympathy with ours, and whose firm hand upon the rein assures us that all things are working together for our eternal good.

III. THE OBJECT OF JEHOVAH IN THUS DOING. This riding of the God of Jesburun upon the heaven is "in His people's help." The chariot was the most formidable of all the implements of ancient warfare. The celerity with which it swept across the field of action; the momentum with which it crushed its way over the prostrate forms of opposing hosts; the vantage it afforded to the warrior by its elevated platform and protecting rail, and the carnage wrought by the sharp blades upon its axles as they hewed their way through the masses like scythes through the ripened grain: these made it of all engines of war the most effective and the most terrible. The children of Israel fled in dismay as they heard the rumble of Pharaoh's chariot wheels. When intercepted by the waters of the Red Sea they stood cowering with affright as they saw the gleam of the chariots in the sunlight. Moses, therefore, introduces an element of encouragement peculiarly appropriate to the circumstances and experiences of the people when he represents Jehovah as an infinite charioteer riding majestically forth upon the heaven, keeping ever near His people in their wilderness journey, and ready in the hour of their conflict and peril to appear for their relief and for the discomfiture of their foes. It was just the assurance needed by a host who felt the inferiority of their equipment and resources to those of the enemies with whom they would have to contend. But without discarding from our view the special symbolism of the text, what can be more inspiring to the Church in this age, and in the midst of her present conflicts, than this thought of her Jehovah-Jesus, sitting upon the circle of the heavens, holding in His hands the reins of God's providential government; keeping pace in the march of His providence with the progress of the Church; then always nearest when she is in her times of greatest peril; holding all the powers of heaven, earth, and hell in subjection to Himself, and plucking His grandest victories over the powers of darkness out of the very jaws of apparent defeat?

(T. D. Witherspoon, D. D.)

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KJV: There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky.

WEB: "There is none like God, Jeshurun, who rides on the heavens for your help, In his excellency on the skies.