Exodus15chapter 15

This chapter opens with the one long poem in Exodus, and the poem has a fixed day in the year. Rashi records that the Song is read as the lesson of the seventh day of Passover, because that is the morning it was first sung (Rashi on Exodus 14:5:1, citing the tractate Megillah). Rashi also describes how it was sung at the sea. Moses sang it to the men and they repeated it after him, and Miriam sang it to the women and they repeated it after her (Rashi on Exodus 15:21:1). The timbrels and the dancing of verse 20 belong to that scene.

Rashi reads the opening verb as a resolve formed at the sight of the miracle, so that the song began in the heart before it reached the mouth (Rashi on Exodus 15:1:1). At verse 6 he takes the doubled right hand as a picture of mercy. When Israel does the will of God, he says, the left hand that punishes becomes a second right hand (Rashi on Exodus 15:6:1). At verse 12 he gives a parable for the inclining of that hand. Glass vessels held in a man's hand fall and shatter when he tilts it a little (Rashi on Exodus 15:12:1). At verse 17 he reads the word for bringing in as prophecy about Moses himself, who says them rather than us because he foresaw that he would stay outside the land (Rashi on Exodus 15:17:1). At verse 22 he explains why Israel had to be made to move on from the sea. The Egyptian horses had been decked with gold and silver, and the people were still gathering it out of the water (Rashi on Exodus 15:22:1). The text is the Rosenbaum and Silbermann Rashi of 1929 to 1934, in the public domain. The corpus carries no linked commentary on this chapter, so Rashi stands alone on it here.

The rabbis take up the Song itself at Avodah Zarah 24b:15 and Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Shirah 5:1 and 6:1. On the question who is like You among the gods they taught at Berakhot 14b:10 and Bamidbar Rabbah 2:10. On the dread falling upon the nations they taught at Berakhot 4a:17. On the bitter water of Marah they taught at Arakhin 15a:19 and Bava Kamma 82a:5, and on the murmuring that followed in Bamidbar Rabbah 12:7.