What Does Exodus 15:1 Mean?

Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the LORD, saying, "I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the Horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea." The Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:1-21) is the oldest extended poem in the Bible and the first liturgical song of Israel's covenant community.

Sung immediately after the sea crossing on the eastern shore, the song is Israel's first corporate act of worship as a free people. The opening declaration "I will sing to the LORD" (Hebrew: ashira l'YHWH) is singular ("I") despite the communal singing context (Moses and Israel sang): the community sings as one voice, in the singular of unified corporate praise.

"For he has triumphed gloriously" (Hebrew: ki ga'oh ga'ah, for he is exceedingly exalted/raised) is the superlative expression of YHWH's victory: the repetition of the root ga'ah (to be high, exalted) in both verb and adverb creates an intensified declaration. YHWH's exaltation through the sea crossing is not simply significant but supremely so: the greatest act of divine-warrior exaltation Israel has witnessed. The ga'ah-verb will become the theological root for YHWH's opposition to human pride (Isaiah 2:12-17): the same quality of exaltation that belongs supremely to YHWH is what YHWH opposes when humans claim it.

"The horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea": the song's central image, the chariots and horsemen of Pharaoh drowned in the sea, is the victory fact that grounds all subsequent praise. The horse-and-rider phrase becomes Israel's shorthand for Egypt's military defeat and YHWH's victory: compact, memorable, and total. Every subsequent reference to the Exodus in Israel's poetry invokes some form of this sea-victory image. The song that begins with the horse-and-rider image is the template for all subsequent divine-warrior praise in the Old Testament cannon.