15:1b “I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.
15:2 The LORD is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him; my father’s God, and I will exalt him.
15:3 The LORD is a warrior; the LORD is his name.
15:4 Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he cast into the sea; his elite officers were sunk in the Red Sea.
15:5 The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone.
15:6 Your right hand, O LORD, glorious in power— your right hand, O LORD, shattered the enemy.
15:7 In the greatness of your majesty you overthrew your adversaries; you sent out your fury; it consumed them like stubble.
15:8 At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up; the floods stood up in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea.
15:9 The enemy said, ‘I will pursue; I will overtake; I will divide the spoil; my desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword; my hand shall destroy them.’
15:10 You blew with your wind; the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters.
15:11 Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, doing wonders?”
15:20 Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing.
15:21 And Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.”
Exodus 15:1b–11, 20–21 (NRSVue)
Horse and rider thrown into the sea. The Exodus tradition summed up in the song of a prophetess. This is one of a handful of images or phrases in the Bible that are truly programmatic, that brim with such poetic intensity and suggestiveness that they overflow with meaning and possibility. Unstoppable military force, insatiable economic exploitation, and inescapable colonial oppression swallowed up by the sea itself. It is a poetic expression of the cosmic triumph of good over evil in the political sphere.
Known as “the Song of the Sea,” the poem in Exodus 15:1–21 is a rich text full of allusion and symbolism. It is not easy to say when it was written, in whole or in part, or by whom, but many scholars are of the opinion that it is among the oldest pieces of literature in the entire Bible and the earliest piece of the Exodus tradition itself. It is like a seed from which the rest of the Exodus story grew.
At the heart of that story is the image of chariots thrown into the ocean. For many centuries, the chariot was one of the most powerful weapons in ancient Near Eastern warfare. They could be armed with spikes and carry an archer with a large stock of arrows. Egyptian armies were one of the great military powers of the ancient world, and in one battle alone an Egyptian king led an army with more than 5,000 chariots. They symbolized the military power of the Egyptian empire.
At first glance, the poem in Exodus 15 seems to summarize the preceding story in Exodus 14, where the Hebrew people are led across the Sea of Reeds on dry ground. A closer look reveals quite a few divergences between the two texts. Most notably, for example, there is no explicit reference to the Hebrews crossing the Sea of Reeds on dry ground in the poem. Where a divine wind blows the water back in Exodus 14:21, another wind blows the waters over the Pharaoh’s army in 15:10. Moses extends his hand over the sea in Exodus 14:16, 21, 26, but in Exodus 15:6 it is God’s right hand that destroys the enemy. There is no battle in Exodus 14, but in the poem God is a warrior (15:3) who shatters the enemy (15:6) with fiery blasts of fury (15:7). In other words, the logic of the poem in 15:1b–11 differs from the logic of the Exodus story.
The logic of Exodus 15 derives from mythic traditions of the ancient world. When the poet asks, “Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods?” (15:11), some from his audience might think of one of several old stories of other warrior storm gods vanquishing their enemies and establishing their cosmic dominance. The most well-known of these comes from the city-state of Ugarit on the Syrian coast, and it concerns the ascendancy of the god Baal. Together with similar stories from Mesopotamia, Anatolia and the Mediterranean, these myths follow a similar pattern where a storm god is chosen to rule the divine pantheon after defeating an oceanic foe in battle.
So, when God is described as a “warrior” in Exodus 15:3, it is in preparation for mythological battle. And although we see numerous parallels with the ancient mythic pattern in Exodus 15, the cosmic foe God engages in battle is not a primordial, elemental power like the sea, but a human, institutional power. This is a human enemy (15:9), but in the song the enemy is not presented as a specific historical enemy. There is no specific Pharaoh named in the Exodus tradition either here or in the preceding chapters. The Pharaoh mentioned in 15:4 is not a historical person, but a symbol for the imperial ambition of human societies. His armies, horses, riders and chariots are the physical manifestations of military might used to kill, subjugate, enslave, exploit and dominate.
When Miriam and the other Hebrew women sing and dance to celebrate this defeat in Exodus 15:20–21, they are not gloating over the suffering of historical persons. In his sermon on Exodus 14:30 in Strength to Love, Martin Luther King Jr. says that the death of Pharaoh and his army “symbolizes the death of evil and of inhuman oppression and unjust exploitation.” Their song does not even refer to a battle at all! They are not celebrating militarism when it works to their benefit. They celebrate the utter and complete removal of military might from human affairs. That is to say, the triumph of God they are singing about is a victory over the ultimate defeat of imperial militarism itself—or in more contemporary language, the collapse of the colonizing power of the military industrial complex.
There is one more mythological clue to the truth expressed by the poem in Exodus 15. When the text refers to “floods” in 15:5 and “depths” in 15:8, it uses the same term used in Genesis 1:2 to describe the cosmic deep in the priestly creation narrative. This Hebrew word těhôm consistently evokes a mythological setting, usually in reference to God’s creation of the world. So when we encounter this term in Exodus it is as if we are reading another creation story. However, this creation story is not about a natural order but a human political order. In Genesis, God creates the world, and in Exodus God creates a nation—a non-militaristic and anti-imperialist nation free from the chains of economic exploitation.
The mythological claim that Pharaoh and his army have been cast into the sea is an expression of values. That is, the people of God are born out of the struggle against the evils of oppression and exploitation. These are ongoing features of human societies, particularly here in the United States, where military conflict with Iran escalates week by week, the genocide of the Palestinian people marches on with American support, and working people are burdened by ever higher costs with little relief in sight. These are the behaviors of a Pharaonic regime, and according to the Exodus story, they run counter to God’s salvific intention for the world.
The Song of the Sea celebrates the demise of all regimes of oppression and anticipates the creation of a new politics that is not based on violence and exploitation. The narrative of the Exodus has been a source of inspiration for religious communities and political movements the world over. In a similar way, the song of celebration in Exodus 15 is a source of hope for a world free from militarism and colonialism. It hopes for a world where the machines of war, banished to the bottom of the sea, can no longer threaten us.
