Exodus15chapter 15

Exodus 15:1-2

Gill and Spurgeon both call this the first song recorded in Scripture, and it is sung on the far bank rather than in the water. What Israel said at the sea itself was the complaint of 14:11 and 14:12, and the singing waits until the deliverance is behind them. Revelation 15:3 names it again at the other end of the Bible and sets the song of Moses beside the song of the Lamb. Verse 2 is already looking past the wilderness to a house, I will prepare him an habitation, and Psalm 118:14 later quotes the opening line whole.

Exodus 15:3

The title stands here for the first time in Scripture, and this is the one place it is laid on God as a plain name, since Isaiah 42:13 uses it as a comparison and says he shall stir up jealousy like a man of war. It answers what Moses told the people the day before at 14:14, that the LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace. The second half of the verse fastens the title to the name itself, the LORD is his name, so the song puts the fighting into who he is rather than into the occasion.

Exodus 15:4-5

The chariots were Egypt's best arm, counted at six hundred chosen at 14:7, and the song reports them on the sea floor. They sank into the bottom as a stone here and as lead at verse 10, two weights given to the same fact. Egypt drowned Hebrew boys in a river at 1:22, and water is what closes over Egypt's own army.

Exodus 15:6-7

The right hand is named twice in one verse, once for the glory and once for the blow. Then the fire image lands on a word Exodus has used before, since Pharaoh's host is consumed as stubble and stubble is what Israel was scattered across Egypt to gather when the straw was taken away at 5:12. The stuff the slaves scraped out of the fields is the stuff the song makes of the army that drove them.

Exodus 15:8-10

Chapter 14 called it a strong east wind and the song calls it the blast of thy nostrils, the same event told as breath. Verse 9 gives the enemy six short clauses in a row, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, my lust shall be satisfied upon them, I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them, and every one of them is a boast about what he will do next. Verse 10 answers the whole speech in one line, Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them. Psalm 33:7 and Psalm 78:13 both pick up the heap of waters from verse 8.

Exodus 15:11

The word holiness occurs here for the first time in Scripture, inside a line about what God is like, and the next place it stands is on the gold plate of the high priest at 28:36. The question about the gods rests on something the book has already claimed, since 12:12 said God would execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt and Numbers 33:4 reports that he did. Glorious in holiness is a phrase found in this verse and nowhere else in the Bible.

Exodus 15:12-13

The earth swallowed them is an odd verb for a drowning, and Numbers 16:32 uses it again of Korah when the ground opens. Verse 13 turns from the army to the people and sets two words together, mercy and redeemed, with the verb redeem first given at 6:6 where God promised to redeem with a stretched out arm. The destination is named before they know the road, since he has guided them in his strength unto his holy habitation.

Exodus 15:14-16

The song looks forward and names four peoples in the order they sit along the road to Canaan, Palestina, Edom, Moab and the inhabitants of Canaan. Forty years later Rahab says this back to the spies at Joshua 2:9 to 11, that terror is fallen upon us and our hearts did melt, and she names hearing about the Red sea as the cause. Verse 16 calls the people purchased, a word Genesis used of Abraham buying a burial field at 25:10, so the deliverance is described as a purchase and not only a rescue.

Exodus 15:17

The word Sanctuary occurs here for the first time in Scripture, ten chapters before God tells Moses to make one at 25:8. Israel is standing on a beach with a wilderness in front of it, and the song is already describing a settled house with God dwelling in it. Planting is a fixed image chosen for people who at this hour own nothing beyond what they carried out of Egypt.

Exodus 15:18-19

This is the first place Scripture says that God reigns, and it is said by former slaves about the God who has just drowned the only king they had ever served. Revelation 11:15 puts the same words at the end of the Bible, that he shall reign for ever and ever. Verse 19 steps out of the poetry and restates the plain fact underneath it, that the horse of Pharaoh went into the sea and the children of Israel went on dry land in the midst of the sea.

Exodus 15:20-21

Miriam is the first woman in Scripture called a prophetess, and the word next falls on Deborah at Judges 4:4. She is named the sister of Aaron rather than the sister of Moses, and the text gives no reason for it. The timbrel enters the Bible here as well, and Jephthah's daughter will come out to meet her father with timbrels and dances at Judges 11:34. Miriam answers the men with the opening words of verse 1, and the word triumphed occurs twice in the whole Bible, in her line and in his.

Exodus 15:22-23

Three days out of the water and there is no water, which is the whole distance between the song and the complaint that follows it. Marah means bitter, so the first stop after the sea is a disappointment that gets named for what was wrong with it. The wilderness of Shur is the same country Genesis 16:7 put Hagar in when she ran from Sarai, where the angel of the LORD found an Egyptian slave woman by a fountain on the way to Shur.

Exodus 15:24

The word murmured occurs here for the first time in Scripture, three days after the first song. It comes twice more before Sinai, at 16:2 and at 17:3, and then at Numbers 14:2 where the same complaint meets a different answer. In Exodus God answers every murmur with water, bread, meat or a dry road, and at Kadesh the murmuring costs a whole generation the land.

Exodus 15:25

Moses cries and is shown a tree, and the tree cast into the water is what changes the water, so the remedy goes into the bitterness rather than around it. The phrase a statute and an ordinance occurs here for the first time, before Sinai and before any law has been given. The verse ends by saying he proved them, which makes the bitter water a test as well as a need. Matthew Henry and other older writers read the tree as a figure of the cross, and that reading rests on their names rather than on any New Testament statement.

Exodus 15:26

The word healeth occurs here for the first time in Scripture and the whole Bible uses it four times, here and at Psalm 103:3, Psalm 147:3 and Isaiah 30:26. It answers the second of the three signs God gave Moses at the bush, the hand made leprous and made whole again at 4:6 and 4:7, which is the one sign of the three that never gets a scene of its own. The diseases named are Egypt's, so the promise is measured against the country they left rather than against sickness at large.

Exodus 15:27

Twelve wells and threescore and ten palm trees, and Numbers 33:9 records the same stop with the same two counts. Matthew Henry and other commentators read the numbers against the twelve tribes and the seventy souls who went down into Egypt at Genesis 46:27, and the text itself draws neither line. The chapter that opened with a song closes with an encampment beside water, one stage past the place where there was none.