Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 65:7

"Who stilleth the roaring of the seas, The roaring of their waves, And the tumult of the peoples." — Psalms 65:7 (ASV)

Tumult. —Here we see the literal passing into the figurative. From the raging seas the poet’s thought goes to the anarchies arising from the wild passions of men, for which in all literature the ocean has furnished metaphors . In a well-known passage, the Latin poet Virgil reverses the simile, likening the sudden calm which succeeds the storm that wrecked Aeneas to the effect produced by a leader of men in a seditious city (Virgil, Aeneid 1.148).