Exodus 15:2

The Lord is my strength and song,..... The strength of Moses and the children of Israel against the fears of the Egyptians, and of entrance into the Red sea; who inspired them with courage, and

The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father's God, and I will exalt him.

My strength and song; the matter or subject of the present song of praise. An habitation; a place for his service and worship, where he will dwell by his special presence.

Exodus 15:2 The LORD [is] my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he [is] my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father’ s God, and I will exalt him.Ver. 2. I will prepare him a habitation.] Or, I will adorn him i I will give him ornaments and trimmings. Such God accounts our poor praises.

(2) The Lord is my strength and song.—Heb., My strength and song is Jah. The contracted form of Jehovah, Jah, is here used for the first time; but its existence in the current speech has already been indicated by the name Moriah, which occurs in Genesis 22:1. It is here used on account of the rhythm. He is become my salvation.—Heb,, he has been to me for salvation: i.e., “he has saved me out of the hand of Pharaoh.” The beauty and force of the passage causes Isaiah to adopt it into one of his most glorious poems, the “joyful thanksgiving of the faithful for the mercies of God,” contained in his twelfth chapter. (See Exodus 15:2.) I will prepare him an habitation.—So Onkelos and Aben-Ezra; but Jarchi, the Targums of Jerusalem and Jonathan, the LXX., and Vulg., with most moderns, translate, “I will glorify him.” It is a strong objection to the rendering of the Authorised Version that Moses is not likely to have had the idea of preparing God a habitation until the revelation of God’s will on the subject was made to him on Sinai (Exodus 25-27). The law of parallelism also requires such a meaning as “glorify” to correspond with the “exalt” of the next clause. My father’s God.—“Father” here, by a common Hebrew idiom, stands for “forefathers” generally. (Comp. Note on Exodus 3:6.)

Verse 2. The Lord is my strength and song] How judiciously are the members of this sentence arranged! He who has God for his strength, will have him for his song; and he to whom Jehovah is become salvation, will exalt his name. Miserably and untunably, in the ears of God, does that man sing praises, who is not saved by the grace of Christ, nor strengthened by the power of his might. It is worthy of observation that the word which we translate LORD here, is not יהוה JEHOVAH in the original, but יה JAH; "as if by abbreviation," says Mr. Parkhurst, "for יהיה yeheieh or יהי yehi. It signifies the Essence οων, He who IS, simply, absolutely, and independently. The relation between יה Jah and the verb היה to subsist, exist, be, is intimated to us the first time יה Jah is used in Scripture, (Exodus 15:2:) 'My strength and my song is יה JAH, and he is become ( vajehi) to me salvation.'" See Psalms 68:5; Psalms 89:6; Psalms 94:7; Psalms 115:17-18; Psalms 118:17. JAH יה is several times joined with the name Jehovah יהוה so that we may be sure that it is not, as some have supposed, a mere abbreviation of that word. See Isaiah 12:2; Isaiah 26:4. Our blessed Lord solemnly claims to himself what is intended in this Divine name יה JAH, John 8:58: "Before Abraham was, (γενεσθαι, was born,) εγωειμι, I AM," not I was, but I am, plainly intimating his Divine eternal existence. Compare Isaiah 43:13. And the Jews appear to have well understood him, for then took they up stones to cast at him as a blasphemer. Compare Colossians 1:16-17, where the Apostle Paul, after asserting that all things that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, were created, εκτισται, by and for Christ, adds And HE IS (αυτοςεστι, not ην, was) before all things, and by him all things συνεστηκε, have subsisted, and still subsist. See Parkhurst. From this Divine name יה Jah the ancient Greeks had their Ιη, Ιη, in their invocations of the gods, particularly of Apollo (the uncompounded ONE) the light; and hence EI, written after the oriental manner from right to left, afterwards IE, was inscribed over the great door of the temple at Delphi! See Clarke on Exodus 3:14, and the concluding observations there. I will prepare him a habitation] ואנוהו veanvehu. It has been supposed that Moses, by this expression, intended the building of the tabernacle; but it seems to come in very strangely in this place. Most of the ancient versions understood the original in a very different sense. The Vulgate has et glorificabo eum; the Septuagint δοξασωαυτον, I will GLORIFY him; with which the Syriac, Coptic, the Targum of Jonathan, and the Jerusalem Targum, agree.

2–5. Jehovah is the object of the poet’s praise, Jehovah, the potent and irresistible ‘man of war,’ who has overwhelmed His enemies in the sea.

2-5. First strain. JAH — A poetic abbreviation of JAHVEH, restricted in use to the higher kinds of poetry, and found often in compound names, as Yirm’jah, (Jeremiah;) also in certain formulas, as