Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 114:3

"The sea saw it, and fled; The Jordan was driven back." — Psalms 114:3 (ASV)

Fled. —The Authorised Version weakens the effect by rendering it was driven back. (See Joshua 3:16.) The scene presented is of the “descending stream” (the words employed seem to have a special reference to that peculiar and most significant name of the “Jordan”) not parted asunder, as we generally imagine, but, as the psalm expresses it, turned backwards (Stanley, Jewish Church, i. 229).