Ps. 78.13-14 (mastery and prodigal provision)

He split the sea / and brought them / through it,
and caused the water / to stand up / like a wall. 

If our claim has been accurate thus far regarding the need to actively comprehend the wonders of God, then it may seems surprising to note that it is only now, in verse 13, that the wonders are actually reported. Up to this point, the psalm has focused almost entirely on the stories transmission (and its failure). It seems important then to note that the first ‘wonder’ performed by God in the psalm is not the plagues leading up to the parting of the sea. Rather, the psalm begins at the parting. I think there is a reason for this. The parting of the sea is, as in creation, the taming, or mastery, of the waters of chaos. We might say it is parting the waters of death so that his family can pass through unharmed. The following verses will speak to another “splitting” and its relation to water. There, however, it will be in reference to the “splitting of rock” and the provision of life-giving water. The point, I think, is that through the portrayal of ‘splitting’ and of water we see a God working for his children in an all-encompassing manner: he splits the water of death and splits rocks to provide water of life. Here, as to the ‘sea’, the image is of a total mastery and control. He can not only split it but he can shape it, making it conform to a boundary of his choosing: “like a wall”. There is no sense here of the sea’s being a threat or of it being difficult for God to control. The reverse is the case when it comes to the living water. There, as opposed to this rigid mastery, God’s control of the water will be in a type of prodigal abandon—the will drink “as from a great deep…water ran down like rivers…”. In one the water is parted and controlled; in the other the water is brought forth and flows. This sense of an all-encompassing protection/provision is “split” by the verse between them: “And he led them / with a cloud / by day – and all night / by a fiery light.” Notice how this verse encapsulates the dynamic of the water: 1) there is the duality of cloud/day and night/light, as there was the duality of death-water and living-water. Further, there is the sense of an all encompassing nature of God’s provision as his guidance is complete throughout day and night – just as the use of water was complete from water of death to water of life. All of this is important to grasp as we get to the key verse 17—it is directly in the midst of this all encompassing protection and provision that the ‘fathers’ will ‘sin against him’.