Doubtless when the psalmist penned our text, his first thought was the crossing of the Red Sea. He was seeking to revive his drooping heart by recalling the saving power of God in Israel's past.
But the words of a true poet never end when we have found their literal
significance. It is one mark of poetic inspiration that it is capable of indefinite
expansion. It is not by narrowing down, it is by widening out, that we get to the
real genius of a poet, and the writer of this psalm had the true gift.
Thy way is in the sea-were there not glimpses in that of truths which the
Exodus never could exhaust? So did the writer feel-so must we all feel-and it is on two of these suggestions that I wish to dwell.

There were two places above all others dreaded by the Jew. The one was
the desert and the other was the sea. The desert-for it was the home of the wild beasts and the haunt of the robbers who plundered the Jewish villages, and it was across the desert that those armies came which besieged Jerusalem and pillaged it.
And the sea-because it was full of storms and treachery in Jewish eyes; it
was the hungry, cruel, insatiable deep. It is very difficult for us who are in a coastal state to enter into that feeling of the Jew.