What Does Psalm 114:5 Mean?
What ails you, O sea, that you flee? O Jordan, that you turn backward?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back?THE KEY
The Jordan, whose name carries the idea of descending, turns back from its defining course.
THE MEANING
The sea and the Jordan are addressed as if they can answer for their retreat. The river turns back, and the sea flees; the question makes their usual course look less fixed than it seems. In the psalm’s wider picture, even the waters yield before the LORD’s presence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that a force with a fixed course cannot be interrupted.
THE ROOT
תִּסֹּב לְאָחוֹר
tisov le’achor
GROWS FROM
סבב
s-b-b
turn, go around
“turn backward” in this verse is tisov le’achor. The Hebrew verb pictures Jordan turning back, with לְאָחוֹר (le’achor, backward) making the direction explicit. The river’s forward movement itself is what gives way.
ALSO GROWS
sābab: turn, go around
סָבַב
This is the root verb behind Jordan’s turning back.
sāvîv: around, surrounding
סָבִיב
The same root carries the sense of movement around; here that movement reverses the river’s expected course.
יַרְדֵּן
Yardēn
GROWS FROM
ירד
y-r-d
descend, go down
The river’s name is connected with יָרַד (yārad), “to descend.” This verse asks why Jordan turns back, making the reversal audible against the downward movement carried in its name.
ALSO GROWS
yārad: descend, go down
יָרַד
The root behind Jordan’s name gives the river a downward motion that this verse interrupts.
hôrîd: bring down, cause to descend
הוֹרִיד
This causative branch shares the root’s downward movement, sharpening the contrast with Jordan’s turn back.
תָּנוּס
tānūs
GROWS FROM
נוס
n-w-s
flee, escape
“flee” in this verse is tānūs. The sea’s retreat comes from a root that also names refuge. Hebrew holds together fleeing and the place one flees to, so the sea’s flight is more than a change of position: it is an escape.
ALSO GROWS
nās: flees, escapes
נָס
This is the same root’s basic action, used here of the sea.
mānôs: refuge, place of escape
מָנוֹס
The related noun shows that the root of the sea’s flight can also name a place of refuge.
THE PATTERN
Waters that seem to block the way yield when God’s presence confronts them.
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD made the sea go back by a strong breath of the east all that night, and made the sea dry ground, and the waters were split.And the waters which came down from above stood and rose as a single heap, very far from the city Adam, beside Zaretan. And those that came down toward the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, were used up and cut off. And the people crossed over facing Jericho.And waking, he rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, Be silent. Be muzzled. And the wind wore itself out, and a great calm came.THE THREAD
The sea saw and fled; the Jordan turns backward.Verse 3 states the same two actions with the same Hebrew roots: the sea flees, and Jordan turns back. Verse 5 turns that report into a question addressed to the waters, making their retreat feel like a response to the presence the psalm names later.
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