Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Song of the Sea
Exodus 15:1-21
1 Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to Yahweh, and said, “I will sing to Yahweh, for he has triumphed gloriously. He has thrown the horse and his rider into the sea. · WEB
The first song in Scripture celebrates a rescue and then looks past it, to a land not yet entered and a sanctuary not yet built.
I will sing to Yahweh, for he has triumphed gloriously. He has thrown the horse and his rider into the sea Exodus 15:1.
The first extended song in Scripture, sung on a beach by people who had been slaves the week before. Its subject is not their escape but the character of the one who arranged it, and the pronouns bear that out: the song is almost entirely about what he did.
Yah is my strength and song. He has become my salvation. This is my God, and I will praise him; my father's God, and I will exalt him Exodus 15:2.
Two relations in one verse. He is my God, known personally and now, and he is my father's God, the same one who spoke to Abraham. Inherited faith and firsthand experience are set side by side without embarrassment, which is what a rescue like this makes possible: the family religion has just been confirmed in front of the family.
Yahweh is a man of war. Yahweh is his name Exodus 15:3.
The line is uncomfortable and is not meant to be softened. What it asserts is that God takes sides in history, and the side he took was that of an unarmed people against a state that had been drowning their children. A God indifferent to that would not be gentler; he would be worse.
The middle of the song quotes the enemy, and the quotation is its own verdict. I will pursue. I will overtake. I will divide the plunder. My desire will be satisfied on them. I will draw my sword. My hand will destroy them Exodus 15:9. Six first-person verbs in a row, piled up without a pause, and the answer takes half a line: you blew with your wind. The sea covered them Exodus 15:10. The whole confrontation is compressed into a contrast of grammar.
Who is like you, Yahweh, among the gods? Who is like you, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? Exodus 15:11.
This is the question the plagues were sent to answer Exodus 5:2, now asked as praise rather than as contempt, and asked by the people who watched the answer arrive.
Then the song turns forward, and this is its most remarkable feature. From verse thirteen it sings in the past tense about things that have not happened: the nations along the route are already dismayed, Israel has already been planted in the mountain of your inheritance, and God already dwells in the sanctuary, Lord, which your hands have established Exodus 15:17. There is no sanctuary. There will not be one for a year, and its pattern has not yet been given. The song treats the whole future as settled because the one thing needed to settle it has now been demonstrated, and it closes on the only ground that could support such confidence: Yahweh will reign forever and ever Exodus 15:18.
Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand Exodus 15:20. She is given a title here without explanation, and she is presumably the girl who stood watching a basket in the reeds. The women answer the song antiphonally with its opening line, and the last thing recorded before the complaining resumes is a nation singing in two parts.
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