Great mountains. — See margin, and compare Psalms 80:10, “cedars of God.” So too the rain is called “God’s brook.” The epithet not only implies greatness and dignity, but also has reference to God as Creator.
A great deep. — The reference, as usual, with the words deep, depth, is to the great abyss of waters, of which the seas were regarded as the surface.
The twofold comparison in this verse recalls Wordsworth’s lines —
“Two voices are there: one is of the sea.
One of the mountains — each a mighty voice.”
but while to the modern poet the voice is Liberty, to the ancient Hebrew it is Righteousness. The majesty of the hills has often suggested the supremacy of right over wrong —
“Thou hast a voice, great mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe.”
The calm of the infinite sea has often soothed agitated souls. Hebrew poetry connected both immediately with God. the uplifted strength of the hills became an emblem of His eternal truth; the depth and expanse of the infinite sea of His outspread goodness and inexhaustible justice.