Speaking of God, Asaph says …

“The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee; they were afraid: the depths also were troubled.” Psalm 77:16

These statements are both literal facts, and poetic utterances, simultaneously!

God is here miraculously making Himself known, allowing Himself to be “seen!”

The specific instance being described is, I believe, particularized in verse 20 of our Psalm. Where God … “led His people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.”

This is specifically describing the Exodus! The time when God parted the Red Sea! And guided the Jews across “dryshod,” using a word Isaiah later coined. Out of the “clutches” of Pharaoh and his army!

The “waters” of that Sea … acknowledging their Creator … were “afraid!” In Hebrew that word is “chul,” meaning “twisting, whirling, trembling!” Here is “chaos!”

The noun “depths” translates “tehom,” actually an “abyss!” Maybe the underground reservoirs of water, rivers flowing beneath the earth.

They became “troubled” at God’s Presence, with “ragaz” meaning “disquieted, made to tremble, rage, quake!”

But out of the “confusion,” God will bring “peace, deliverance, safety!”

Salvation!

Asaph is now looking at God’s Might, Power … but coupled with his Love, Mercy, as He delivers Israel from her chief enemy!

On the Cross … Jesus too faced the roaring “waters” of God’s Wrath, the “weight” of sin taken (voluntarily) upon Himself … and there again (via the precious Blood of the Lamb) God brought peace out of turmoil!

Psalm 69:13-15 is often prophetically applied to Jesus. “O God, in the multitude of thy mercy hear me, in the truth of thy salvation. Deliver me out of the mire, and let me not sink: let me be delivered from them that hate me, and out of the deep waters. Let not the waterflood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me.”

Wow!

Jesus Himself “linked” his Life and Ministry and Death to Psalm 69, in fact.

Psalm 69:4, precisely. “They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head: they that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty: then I restored that which I took not away.”

Now Jesus in John 15:25. “But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause.”

I strongly suspect that Jesus, Who propitiated His Father at Calvary … is also the Jesus (Jehovah) Who conquered the Red Sea! And drowned Pharaoh!

Who overcame the raging waters!

Praise his Name.

— Dr. Mike Bagwell

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