Exodus 15: 1 –16: 1
The Aftermath
15 Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the LORD, and spoke, saying: “I will sing to the LORD, for He has triumphed gloriously! The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea! 2 The LORD is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation; He Is my God, and I will praise Him; My father’s God, and I will exalt Him. 3 The LORD is a man of war; The LORD is His name. 4 Pharaoh’s chariots and his army He has cast into the sea; His chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea. 5 The depths have covered them; They sank to the bottom like a stone. 6 “Your right hand, O LORD, has become glorious in power; Your right hand, O LORD, has dashed the enemy in pieces. 7 And in the greatness of Your excellence You have overthrown those who rose against You; You sent forth Your wrath; It consumed them like stubble. 8 And with the blast of Your nostrils the waters were gathered together; The floods stood upright like a heap; The depths congealed in the heart of the sea. 9 The enemy said, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; My desire shall be satisfied on them. I will draw my sword, My hand shall destroy them.’ 10 You blew with Your wind, The sea covered them; They sank like lead in the mighty waters. 11 “Who is like You, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? 12 You stretched out Your right hand; The earth swallowed them. 13 You in Your mercy have led forth The people whom You have redeemed; You have guided them in Your strength To Your holy habitation. 14 “The people will hear and be afraid; Sorrow will take hold of the inhabitants of Philistia. 15 Then the chiefs of Edom will be dismayed; The mighty men of Moab, trembling will take hold of them; All the inhabitants of Canaan will melt away. 16 Fear and dread will fall on them; By the greatness of Your arm they will be as still as a stone, till Your people pass over, O LORD, till the people pass over whom You have purchased. 17 You will bring them in and plant them in the mountain of Your inheritance, in the place, O LORD, which You have made For Your own dwelling, the sanctuary, O Lord, which Your hands have established. 18 “The LORD shall reign forever and ever.” 19 For the horses of Pharaoh went with his chariots and his horsemen into the sea, and the LORD brought back the waters of the sea upon them. But the children of Israel went on dry land in the midst of the sea. 20 Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took the timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. 21 And Miriam answered them: “Sing to the LORD, for He has triumphed gloriously! The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea!” 22 So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea; then they went out into the Wilderness of Shur. And they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. 23 Now when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Marah. 24 And the people complained against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” 25 So he cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There He made a statute and an ordinance for them, and there He tested them, 26 and said, “If you diligently heed the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you.” 27 Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve wells of water and seventy palm trees; so they camped there by the waters.
Today we are going to take a look at the victory song for the new nation of Israel. I find it most interesting that as I put together this bible teaching that the Saint Patrick holiday celebration is two days away. This got me thinking about college victory songs. My favorite song and I think is the most popular is the “Notre Dame Victory March” So, the next time you are watching them on TV you can sing along with the correct lyrics:
Rally sons of Notre Dame
Sing her glory and sound her fame
Raise her Gold and Blue
And cheer with voices true:
Rah, rah, for Notre Dame
We will fight in every game,
Strong of heart and true to her name
We will ne’er forget her
And will cheer her ever
Loyal to Notre Dame.
Cheer, cheer for Old Notre Dame,
Wake up the echoes cheering her name,
Send a volley cheer on high,
Shake down the thunder from the sky!
What though the odds be great or small,
Old Notre Dame will win over all,
While her loyal sons are marching
Onward to victory!
I kind of try to sing Moses’ song with the music from the Notre Dame March. It gets me pumped up. So, let’s now spend some time reviewing the song of Adonai Tzva’ot, The Lord God of Hosts victory march. This song you can sing all the time because He never loses.
As a result of Egypt’s defeat a song was composed. While the second part looks with triumph towards the successful defeat of their future enemies and their settlement in the land this song simply expresses the confidence and belief that has filled the people’s hearts. It is in a sense seen as already accomplished now that they have crossed out of Egypt into our Great God Yahweh’s territory. The singers can now see that triumph is assured, and so speaks of it as already theirs.
15 Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the LORD, and spoke, saying: “I will sing to the LORD, for He has triumphed gloriously! The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea!
It was quite normal for a great victory to be celebrated in verse, and as happens with poetry it is in picturesque language. We are not told who wrote it (it is not described as ‘the Song of Moses, although he sang it), and here it was put to music to enhance the people’s worship. This song must therefore be seen as later sung at a great gathering of worship after it had been composed shortly after the victory and as becoming part of the regular worship of the children of Israel.
2 The LORD is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation; He Is my God, and I will praise Him; My father’s God, and I will exalt Him.
The song is a celebration of Yahweh’s great victory. He has gloriously defeated the Egyptians and destroyed their elite chariot force. He Is the One Who has been, and still Is, their strength, and the One they sing about has also become their Deliverer, and the result is their praise and worship. He Is their God and their father’s God.
3 The LORD Is a man of war; The LORD Is His name. 4 Pharaoh’s chariots and his army He has cast into the sea; His chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea. 5 The depths have covered them; They sank to the bottom like a stone. 6 “Your right hand, O LORD, has become glorious in power; Your right hand, O LORD, has dashed the enemy in pieces. 7 And in the greatness of Your excellence You have overthrown those who rose against You; You sent forth Your wrath; It consumed them like stubble.
The song declares Yahweh to be a military Genius, revealed by nature as ‘The One Who Is there to act’. His Excellency Is revealed in what He has done to Pharaoh’s chariots, and to his commanders by drowning them in the sea. So has He demonstrated the victorious power of His right hand, and shown that He is able to deal with all Who rise against Him. When His anger is roused they are consumed like stubble burnt in the fields.
Please notice all the Egyptian soldiers went down into the depths like a stone. This verse is not written with poetic license nor was it a sea of weeds. It was the Red Sea. The sea was deep enough to drown them. With their heavy armor, they would certainly sink like a stone, not just fall down in the mud and drown because they were stuck. The vivid description suggests an eyewitness.
8 And with the blast of Your nostrils the waters were gathered together; The floods stood upright like a heap; The depths congealed in the heart of the sea. 9 The enemy said, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; My desire shall be satisfied on them. I will draw my sword, My hand shall destroy them.’ 10 You blew with Your wind, The sea covered them; They sank like lead in the mighty waters. 11 “Who is like You, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? 12 You stretched out Your right hand; The earth swallowed them.
Yahweh had blown with His east wind by ‘the blast of His nostrils’ on the waters and thereby prepared a pathway for the children of Israel to walk through. Then the enemy, filled with bloodlust, boasted about what they would do to them. So Yahweh blew again and they were destroyed in the waters.
The deeps were congealed in the heart of the sea seems to mean that they became solid so that the children of Israel could walk on them, or alternately that they became thickened and stopped flowing. In other words they set as mounds around a pathway through the sea.
We see from the description - ‘The enemy said, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, my bloodlust will be satisfied on them, I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them’ a vivid picture of soldiers fired up with bloodlust and greed for spoil as they go forward towards the enemy. The people who were before them were an easy target.
We know that our Holy Yahweh God Is superior to all supernatural beings. He is the only real and living God. He Is unique and incomparable. In a vague way they recognized that in men’s eyes there was a world of gods but those gods were helpless and powerless and as nothing before Yahweh. He was and Is far above all. He stood alone and none compared with Him.
Holiness is that which sets God off as apart from man, and from any other ‘gods’, His purity and ‘otherness’ (unlikeness to anything earthly). He Is unique and different in nature. Thus when anything on earth is made holy it shares that uniqueness and is untouchable except by what is holy.
13 You in Your mercy have led forth The people whom You have redeemed; You have guided them in Your strength To Your holy habitation.
The idea here may well be that having passed through the waters on the border of Egypt they have reached the wilderness where they were to serve Yahweh. This in itself was to them a major achievement. They have crossed the sea and are, as it were, in Yahweh’s domain, where they are to worship Him at His Mountain, His holy habitation, away from Egypt. Reaching the wilderness to worship Yahweh had constantly been their aim.
14 “The people will hear and be afraid; Sorrow will take hold of the inhabitants of Philistia. 15 Then the chiefs of Edom will be dismayed; The mighty men of Moab, trembling will take hold of them; All the inhabitants of Canaan will melt away. 16 Fear and dread will fall on them; By the greatness of Your arm they will be as still as a stone, till Your people pass over, O LORD, till the people pass over whom You have purchased.
The song now looks forward to what lies ahead and depicts the future foes as waiting in terror. The children of Israel know now that they need not fear, for what God has done in Egypt will have petrified them and they will be still as a stone.
17 You will bring them in and plant them in the mountain of Your inheritance, in the place, O LORD, which You have made For Your own dwelling, the sanctuary, O Lord, which Your hands have established. 18 “The LORD shall reign forever and ever.”
The other people living in the Israelite travel will be terror-stricken and petrified until the children of Israel have passed through, something still in the future. And then they, the people whom God had ‘obtained’, will arrive at and be planted in ‘the mountain of your inheritance’. Thus this refers to Yahweh’s dwelling place. But as it is the place where the people are to ‘be planted’ this probably refers to the whole promised land, along with its mountains, seen as ‘the mountain of God’, the dwelling place of God, a special land prepared for His people through whom the whole world will be blessed. It is a visionary picture of a hoped for ideal, the new Eden, where God will dwell with His people.
19 For the horses of Pharaoh went with his chariots and his horsemen into the sea, and the LORD brought back the waters of the sea upon them. But the children of Israel went on dry land in the midst of the sea.
This is a summary note added to confirm the application of the song. This is why they sang, because of what God had done for the children of Israel in destroying the elite of the Egyptian army and providing a passage for the children of Israel through the sea.
20 Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took the timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.
Aaron was the eldest son and probably head of the family. Thus Miriam would be known as the sister of Aaron. The description also kept her on the same level with Aaron and therefore inferior to Moses before God.
21 And Miriam answered them: “Sing to the LORD, for He has triumphed gloriously! The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea!”
This is expressed as a reply to the song sung by Moses and the children of Israel. It is like a chorus, repeating the first refrain. The two songs would be sung together, the latter following the former.
22 So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea; then they went out into the Wilderness of Shur. And they went three days in the wilderness and found no water.
It was now that they begin to learn the hardships of the way. Taking a wilderness route through the wilderness of Shur they travelled for three days through the hot sun and found no water. They had their first lesson that things would not be easy even though they were free.
Passing through the wilderness of Shur, which stretched eastward from the coast, was ‘the way of the land of the Philistines’, guarded by a chain of Egyptian forts, which led northward along the coast, and the ‘way of the wilderness of Shur’ which led northward to Kadesh. This wilderness was the starting point as you leave Egypt. But ‘the way of the land of the Philistines’ was forbidden to the children of Israel, and they were in any case concerned to keep away from routes where they might be followed. They thus took another route which would lead them into the wilderness of Sinai.
23 Now when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Marah. 24 And the people complained against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” 25 So he cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There He made a statute and an ordinance for them, and there He tested them,
After the period without water they came to the oasis at Marah, but the waters were too bitter to drink. Marah may well be the modern ‘Ayin Hawarah. This is a solitary spring of bitter water which now has stunted palm trees growing near it, although the quality of the water varies from time to time. When they saw water the children of Israel were no doubt ecstatic, but the desert waters were bitter compared with the sweet waters of the Nile valley and while their cattle and flocks may well have drunk of it the people themselves found that they could not stomach it. Their joy turning to disappointment they immediately turned on Moses. This led him to pray to Yahweh who directed him to a bush which was probably a kind of barberry, which is known to have the qualities described. And when this was thrown into the waters it was made sweet, that is, the bitterness was softened.
It may be that from his life in the wilderness with the Midianites he had learned the usefulness and effectiveness of this bush on such occasions, and that his prayer to Yahweh was for help in finding such bushes, a cry which was rewarded by Him showing him where he could indeed find some.
Please note the contrast between Egypt with the sweet-water Nile made bitter, and the bitter water here made sweet. He Who had brought judgment on Egypt could in a similar way bring provision to Israel. And in the next verse this provision will include His statutes and His ordinances.
This the first of many times that we are told that the people murmured. We see immediately their slave conditioning. A few days before they had beheld a deliverance that would be remembered for generations to come, but now because of shortage of water they have already forgotten it. While it would certainly be hot, and the journey difficult, there had not really been time for the position to become desperate. The fact was that they had expected to find water, but had not. They were not used to not having water at hand. The Nile had always been near. They were not yet aware of what could be expected in wilderness conditions, and of trek discipline, and had been caught out. And immediately their buoyant spirits slumped.
26 and said, “If you diligently heed the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you.”
‘There he made for them a statute and an ordinance.’ Here also is an attempt to make life sweet. We may see in this the first attempt of Moses, at the command of Yahweh, to lay down some pattern of behavior by which the conglomerate peoples now making up ‘the children of Israel’ could be governed on their wilderness journey. The accompaniment by the mixed multitude had been an unexpected event and clearly some kind of agreement had to be reached about behavior now that they were part of the children of Israel, so that all could be aware of their responsibilities and what was expected of them. They would not have the same customs as the original children of Israel. It was therefore necessary to lay down certain laws to be observed by all. This would enable the smooth running of the camp.
Humanly speaking these would be taken from his own experiences, his knowledge of Egyptian and Midianite laws, and the customs of his own people formulated under the wise guidance of the fathers. They would be written down to form a guide and pattern. This is then confirmed by Yahweh with the promise that obedience will result in good health. Such an attempt would be required in view of the inexperience of the people in living under such conditions and their wide differences in customs (the mixed multitude). The corollary is that if they did not obey they would come under judgment.
From Moses later behavior we can presume that these also were put down in writing and read out to the people. They were a primitive beginning to the later laws. They were then no doubt put into the primitive Tent of Meeting as part of ‘the Testimony’.
A major point to note is the statement ‘There he proved them.’ This is Moses’ response to their murmuring. This may refer to the testing of the people by the bitter waters, a test which they failed. Or it may refer to the fact that He laid down these regulations described above through Moses and ‘proved’ them by seeing whether they were willing to respond to them by accepting them as the binding requirements of Yahweh. In view of the words that followed the latter seems more likely, although there may be a play on the two situations. It should be noted that Yahweh is said to ‘prove’ His people three times, here, in 16.4 and in 20.20.
However, in view of the words that follow where the second part at least is in the words of Yahweh, we may take the ‘He made for them’ and ‘He proved them’ words speaking about Yahweh. He had made the waters sweet, now He provided the guidance and laws which would enable life to go on sweetly. And He did it to test out whether, in spite of their murmurings, they were ready to be faithful to Him.
The reward for obedience will be good health. Instead of bitterness there will be sweetness. He had healed the waters and he would heal them. The corollary was that flagrant disobedience would lead precisely to such diseases. It is in fact unquestionable that some of the provisions of the Law would enhance their physical wellbeing.
They were to be kept from the diseases common in Egypt such as ophthalmia, dysentery, and a variety of skin diseases (Deuteronomy 28.27). In the context this mention of diseases links with the bitterness of the water. If Israel are obedient they will be delivered from diseases, if they are not they will drink bitter water.
27 Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve wells of water and seventy palm trees; so they camped there by the waters.
Their reward for their response was to arrive at an abundant oasis, a sign of Yahweh’s pleasure in it. ‘Twelve’ and ‘seventy’ probably indicate sufficiency, the ‘twelve’ springs of water indicating ample sufficiency of water for the twelve sub-tribes, and the ‘seventy’ palm trees indicating the divine sufficiency of the provision of palm trees with their fruits and shelter (what are a literal seventy palm trees among so many?), or even sufficiency for the clans of the seventy elders.
The whole area is a comparatively fertile one, and contains three fertile wadis which have water most of the year, and many springs of water. The pasturage is fairly good, sometimes rich and luxuriant and there are an abundance of tamarisks, and a number of palm trees. After the dryness of the way it must have been a joy to behold, and they would be able to spread out to the other wadis and ensure that their flocks and herds were able to make up for the hard times that they had experienced.
16.1 ‘And they took their journey from Elim and all the congregation of the children of Israel came into the Wilderness of Sin which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt.’
The analysis suggests that this verse closes chapter 15. After a short stay they continued their journey. They had now been travelling for a full moon period.
We can learn today from Israel’s incident at Marah. It reminds us that on our spiritual journey we must expect to come across bitter wells as well as sweet ones, but when we do we can be confident that our Lord can make the bitter sweet. And in His goodness He has provided for us a Law which is sweet to the taste. From the incident we are also to learn that one of the secrets of blessing is obedience. For as we continue in obedience we will also discover that we are brought eventually to a place of springs and palm trees.
