The sea sees and runs, and mountains dance like sheep. Is that literal?
The psalm talks about water and rock the way you would talk about people. The sea "sees" and "flees." The Jordan River "turns back." Mountains "skip like rams." Then the poet asks them directly: "What is wrong with you, sea, that you flee?"
Two classic commentators say plainly that this is a figure of speech. Radak says it is said as a parable: the water split as if the sea were afraid and ran. Meiri says the same, and adds why the poet asks a question at all: to teach that this did not happen by chance, but by God's will.
Radak sees a point in the mountains too. A mountain is heavy and fixed in place. If God wants, it becomes light and moves like a ram. Radak says this is so that people will know He made everything and that everything is in His hand.
The Midrash tells it as a scene instead. In the Mekhilta, the sea will not split for Moshe until God Himself appears. Then it answers Moshe with verse 7 of our psalm: I am not running from you, son of Amram, but "before the Master, tremble, earth, before the God of Yaakov." The next hard question tells the story in full.
So the sources offer two ways in. In one the sea is a figure of speech that teaches a point. In the other the sea is a character who has to be shown who is in charge. They agree on the point itself: the sea did not move on its own.
Radak on Tehillim 114:3 and 114:8,Meiri on Tehillim 114:3 and 114:5,Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Beshalach 5Every other psalm in Hallel says Hashem. Why does this one never say it?
Look at the psalms on both sides. Tehillim 113 begins "Halleluyah, praise, servants of Hashem." Tehillim 115 opens with "Not to us, Hashem, not to us." (On Rosh Chodesh that opening is skipped.) Tehillim 114 never uses the four-letter Name. It talks about the sea, the Jordan, the mountains and the earth. Verse 2 already says "His holy one" and "His dominion" without saying whose. The psalm does not name Him until verse 7, and even there it uses titles: "the Master" and "the God of Yaakov."
Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Radak and Meiri never say the Name is left out on purpose. What they do show is how they hear the order of the psalm. Meiri and Radak treat verse 5 as a question put to the sea and the rest, and verse 7 as the answer. Meiri says one answer covers everything, because "earth" includes the sea, the Jordan, the mountains and the hills. Radak spells out who the Master is: the God of Yaakov, who acquired Yaakov's family out of the house of slaves with His power.
The Mekhilta tells the same order as a story. Moshe tried God's name on the sea first, and it did not move. He showed the staff, and it did not move. Only when God appeared in His glory did the sea run. The Mekhilta explains with a parable. A king sold his inner garden, and the buyer came to take it, but the guard blocked him. The buyer said "in the king's name," and the guard refused. The buyer showed the king's ring, and the guard refused. Only when the king himself arrived did the guard run.
In that telling, saying the Name was not what moved the sea. God's presence did. One way to hear the psalm is in the same order: first the astonishing things happen, then "why?", and only at the end, who. That is a reading, not something a source says about the missing Name. Whether the poet left it out on purpose stays an open question.
Tehillim 113:1 and 115:1,Meiri on Tehillim 114:6-7,Radak on Tehillim 114:5 and 114:7,Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Beshalach 5,Siddur Sefard, Rosh Chodesh, HallelDid someone really jump into the sea before it split?
The Torah's own telling is short. Moshe stretches out his hand, the sea splits, and the children of Israel come into the sea on dry ground. Nobody is named. But the Gemara ties verse 2 of our psalm, "Yehudah became His holy one," to a person: Nachshon son of Amminadav, the leader of the tribe of Yehudah.
The Gemara gives two versions. Rabbi Meir says the tribes were arguing over who would go in first. The tribe of Binyamin went in, and the leaders of Yehudah threw stones at them. Rabbi Yehudah says that is not how it happened. Each tribe said, "I am not going in first." Then Nachshon jumped in first. He reads a verse in Hoshea as "Yehudah went down with God."
The Gemara adds what Nachshon said in the water. It reads Tehillim 69 as his words: "Save me, God, for the waters have reached my soul." The Gemara concludes that this is why Yehudah earned the right to rule over Israel, because "the sea saw and fled."
Rashi explains the verse as God taking Yehudah as His special portion, and says they also sanctified God's name by going down into the sea. Then he adds that the Aggadah (the Sages' teachings that are stories and lessons) says this is Nachshon, who jumped in and said, "I will go down first." Radak mentions it as something "they say," because Israel were afraid to enter the sea.
So the details come from the Sages' teachings, not from the verse itself. The versions disagree about the scene at the shore: in one, every tribe wanted to be first, and in another, none did. They share one picture: the people stood at the edge of the sea, and someone went in first.
Shemot 14:21-22,Sotah 36b-37a,Rashi and Radak on Tehillim 114:2