Exodus 15:1

Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord,.... Which is the first song recorded in Scripture, though no doubt before this time songs of praise were sung to the Lord; the

Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the LORD, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.

EXODUS CHAPTER 15 Moses and the people praise the Lord, . They want water, . The waters of Marah are bitter, . The people murmur against Moses, . He crieth unto the Lord; the waters are sweetened, . They come to Elim, where they find twelve wells of water, and threescore and ten palm trees, . Moses composed the song, and he, together with the Israelites, sung it, unto the honour and praise of God.

Exodus 15:1 Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the LORD, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.Ver. 1. Then sang Moses.] Presently upon the deliverance, while their hearts were hot, and the mercy fresh. No part of the thank offering might be kept unspent till the third day. Benefits soon grow stale, and putrify, as fish.

XV. THE SONG OF MOSES.(1) Then sang Moses and the children of Israel.—With his usual modesty, Moses does not say that he composed the magnificent ode which follows; but it is scarcely conceivable that it can have had any other author. It bears a close resemblance to the Egyptian religious poetry, with which Moses—and probably no other Israelite of the time—would have been familiar from his early training; and it breathes the elevated tone of religious sentiment that was scarcely shared with Moses by any contemporary. The prophetic statements in the latter verses of the hymn have led some to assign to it a date later than Joshua; but the vagueness of these statements stands in a remarkable contrast with the definiteness and graphic power of the descriptive portion, and points to the time of Moses for the composition. The poetic genius shown in the composition is, no doubt, very considerable; but the statement that it transcends all later Hebrew poesy would not have been made by any critic whose judgment was not biased by his theories. The ode is distinguished from later similar compositions by greater simplicity in the language, and greater freedom in the rhythmical arrangement. There is the usual “parallelism of clauses,” with its three varieties of “antithetic, synthetic, and synonymous;” but the regular cadence is interrupted with unusual frequency by triplet stanzas, and the parallelism is less exact than that of later times. The ode divides itself into two portions (Exodus 15:1-12 and Exodus 15:13-18): the first retrospective, the second prospective. Part II. has no sub-divisions; but Part I. Consists of three, or perhaps we should say of four, portions. First comes the burden, or refrain (Exodus 15:1), which was repeated at the close of each sub-division by Miriam and her choir of women (Exodus 15:21). Then we have the first stanza, or strophe, reaching from Exodus 15:2 to Exodus 15:5. Next we have stanza or strophe 2, extending from Exodus 15:6 to Exodus 15:10. After this, stanza or strophe 3, comprising Exodus 15:11-12. These shorter, and as it were tentative, efforts are followed by the grand burst of prophetic song which constitutes Part II., and extends from Exodus 15:13 to Exodus 15:18, terminating with the sublime utterance, beyond which no thought of man can go, “The Lord shall reign for ever and ever.” I will sing.—It may convey to the ordinary reader some idea of the rhythm of the ode to transcribe into Roman characters and accentuate this opening passage, which is as follows :— Ashirah layhovαh ki gaσh gaαh, Sus v’rokebo ramαh bayyαm. He hath triumphed gloriously.—Heb., he hath glorified himself gloriously (ἐνδόξωςδεδόξασται, LXX.). The main idea implied in the verb gββh is exaltation.

CHAPTER XV Moses and the Israelites sing a song of praise to God for their late deliverance, in which they celebrate the power of God, gloriously manifested in the destruction of Pharaoh and his host, 1; express their confidence in him as their strength and protector, 2, 3; detail the chief circumstances in the overthrow of the Egyptians, 4-8; and relate the purposes they had formed for the destruction of God's people, 9, and how he destroyed them in the imaginations of their hearts, 10. Jehovah is celebrated for the perfections of his nature and his wondrous works, 11-13. A prediction of the effect which the account of the destruction of the Egyptians should have on the Edomites, Moabites, and Canaanites, 14-16. A prediction of the establishment of Israel in the promised land, 17. The full chorus of praise, 18. Recapitulation of the destruction of the Egyptians, and the deliverance of Israel, 19. Miriam and the women join in and prolong the chorus, 20, 21. The people travel three days in the wilderness of Shur, and find no water, 22. Coming to Marah, and finding bitter waters, they murmur against Moses, 23, 24. In answer to the prayer of Moses, God shows him a tree by which the waters are sweetened, 25. God gives them statutes and gracious promises, 26. They come to Elim, where they find twelve wells of water and seventy palm trees, and there they encamp, 27. NOTES ON CHAP. XV Verse 1. Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song] POETRY has been cultivated in all ages and among all people, from the most refined to the most barbarous; and to it principally, under the kind providence of God, we are indebted for most of the original accounts we have of the ancient nations of the universe. Equally measured lines, with a harmonious collocation of expressive, sonorous, and sometimes highly metaphorical terms, the alternate lines either answering to each other in sense, or ending with similar sounds, were easily committed to memory, and easily retained. As these were often accompanied with a pleasing air or tune, the subject being a concatenation of striking and interesting events, histories formed thus became the amusement of youth, the softeners of the tedium of labour, and even the solace of age. In such a way the histories of most nations have been preserved. The interesting events celebrated, the rhythm or metre, and the accompanying tune or recitativo air, rendered them easily transmissible to posterity; and by means of tradition they passed safely from father to son through the times of comparative darkness, till they arrived at those ages in which the pen and the press have given them a sort of deathless duration and permanent stability, by multiplying the copies. Many of the ancient historic and heroic British tales are continued by tradition among the aboriginal inhabitants of Ireland to the present day; and the repetition of them constitutes the chief amusement of the winter evenings.

1a. Then sang, &c.] cf. Numbers 21:17. (In Judges 5:1 the Heb. is simply, And.) 1b. Exordium. The poet bids himself sing (cf. Judges 5:3); and briefly, but forcibly, announces his theme (cf. v. 21). hath triumphed gloriously] This fine paraphrase is based upon the triumphando magnifice egit of Seb. Mόnster, in his Latin version of the O.T. (1534–5). A more lit. rendering would be hath risen up (see, for the rare word, Job 8:11; Job 10:16, Ezekiel 47:5) majestically or proudly: the root idea of the word is to rise up loftily; but derivatives have generally the fig. senses of majesty or pride (see e.g. v. 7, Psalms 96:1). The horse, &c.] Thus briefly, but completely, is the ruin of the Pharaoh’s army described: its chariots and horses, the mainstay of its strength, are, by Divine might, cast irretrievably into the sea. and his rider] ψָ ?λַ ?αι means both to ride a horse, and to ride in a chariot (Jeremiah 51:21 ‘the horse and his rider, … and the chariot and its rider’; similarly Haggai 2:22): hence, as the Egyptians at this time has no cavalry (on Exodus 14:9), if the verse is contemporary with the Exodus, either ‘rider’ must be understood of the rider in the chariot, or (as the pron. rather distinctly connects the ‘rider’ with the horse: cf. Genesis 49:17, and Jer. l.c.) we may read for ψֹ ?λְ ?αֹ ?ε either ψֹ ?λֵ ?α (so LXX.), i.e. ‘The horse and the rider’ (viz. in the chariot), or (Haupt) ψֶ ?λֶ ?α, i.e. ‘The horse and the chariot’ (Exodus 14:9).

With the deliverance of Israel is associated the development of the national poetry, which finds its first and perfect expression in this magnificent hymn.

SONG OF MOSES AND MIRIAM, Exodus 15:1-21. 1. Most glorious — That is, perhaps, as well as our English can do with the terse, alliterative βΰδβΰη, which swelled like a thousand trumpets in every repetition of the chorus.