But the word rendered "_deep_," is, in the original Hebrew, more applicable to the floods of the _ocean_ than to the rapids of a river; and the image, in this sense, is bolder and more expressive still.[70] Billow calls on billow to sweep over the soul of the sufferer. They lift their crested heads, and with hoarse voice summon one another to the assault. "Let us be confederate!" say they. "Let us rouse the spirit of the storm! Let the windows of heaven be opened! Let the fountains of the great deep be broken up, that we may shake this man's confidence in his God, and plunder faith of her expected triumph! Ye angry tempests, driving sleet and battering hail! come and aid us. Ye forked lightnings, gleaming swords of the sky! leap from your cloudy scabbards. Old ocean! be stirred from your lowest depths. Let every wave be fretted to madness, that with one united effort we may effect his discomfiture and leave him a wreck on the waters!" [70] From the uplands where he now was, in the recesses between the mountains of Gilead, David could catch here and there a glimpse of the "Great Sea." They obey the summons. Already chafed and buffeted, they return with fresh violence to the shock. Affliction on affliction, temptation on temptation, roll on this lonely, surf-beaten cliff. Outward calamities--inward troubles; his subjects in revolt--his friends treacherous; his own son and favourite child heading the insurrection; he himself an exile, haunted with the thought of past sins that were now exacting terrible retribution;--and worse than all temporal calamities, the countenance of his God averted. Affliction seemed as if it could go no further--"ALL _thy waves and thy billows have gone over me!_"