The Song at the Sea

A few days later that same people stands trapped. Before them lies the sea, wide and black and shoreless on the far side; behind them the dust rises from 600 chosen chariots, the pride of the army that made the world tremble. Pharaoh had buried his son and let his slaves go. Then he had changed his mind (a god does not concede) and pursued them to take back what was his. There is no way out anymore. The people that only yesterday tasted freedom does what people do when the trap snaps shut: it screams in fear, and turns on the man who brought them here. Were there no graves in Egypt, that you dragged us out to die in the desert?

A wind rises, all night long, and the sea gives way. It does not dry up like a puddle; the water stands like two walls, and between those walls lies a path of dry ground where a moment before the deep had churned. A whole nation crosses through it, in the dark, between two walls of water it does not dare to touch. When the chariots plunge in behind them, into the sand, into the seabed, the wind turns, and the water falls back over horse and rider and the whole army of Pharaoh, and the power that took itself for divine sinks like a stone into the depths, and the waves close, and it grows still. At first light the bodies wash up on the shore, and Israel stands on the far side, with wet clothes and dry feet, watching the water that has closed over its enemy.

There, on the shore, it breaks loose. It is the first song in all the Bible, and it is more an outburst than a restrained thanksgiving. A people sings with the salt air still in their lungs: I will sing to YHWH, for He is highly exalted; the horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea. In the middle of that song, at its highest point, the thanks tips over into a question that expects no answer, because it is itself the answer. Who is like You among the gods, YHWH? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, awesome in praiseworthy deeds, worker of wonders? In Hebrew it is two words, short enough to shout: mi kamocha, who is like You? Who is Your equal, who comes near You, who does what You do? It is the question of someone standing open-mouthed, like a child watching a thunderstorm roll in over the sea who can only cry out: who does that? Question, exclamation and confession fall together. The slaves who a week earlier could barely pronounce the Name of their God sing it as a shout of joy at a sea full of floating enemies. The question of this book is born, and it is born on music.

When the men have sung themselves out, Miriam, the sister of Moses, takes up a tambourine, and all the women follow her with tambourines and dancing, and they sing the refrain back across the water: sing to YHWH, for He is highly exalted. A people of broken slaves dances at the edge of a sea full of corpses. Whoever hears cruelty in that has forgotten how relief sounds from someone who went under and yet still breathes. God Himself takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezek 33:11), but He does not let the oppressor have the last word. Real worship is unpolished and exuberant, with a tambourine in hand and the seawater still in the hair.

There is a depth in that song you only sound once you know what the sea meant to the surrounding nations. For Canaan and Babylon the sea was more than water. It was a power, a god of chaos, the primeval danger that threatened all order, and they told myths about it in which the gods could only subdue it with the greatest effort. In this song the sea is not a god and not even an opponent; it is a tool. God splits it with a word, leads His people through it as over a country road, and slams it shut over His enemy like a door. That is what the singers mean by mi kamocha: not that He is the strongest among the gods, but that the very powers others worship do His dirty work for Him.

The song looks beyond the shore. Before the people has even taken one step into the desert, with nothing but sand and thirst ahead, it already sings of the arrival. Two verses after the question, the song also names what drove God: "In Your steadfast love You have led the people You redeemed; in Your strength You have guided them to Your holy dwelling" (Exod 15:13). You will bring them and plant them on the mountain of Your inheritance, the place You have made Your dwelling. And it ends with the sentence that YHWH will reign, forever and ever, a sentence that here, for the first time, sounds aloud in Scripture. On the edge of an emptiness a handful of ex-slaves proclaims the eternal kingship of their God. That is faith: singing of the mountain while your feet are still ankle-deep in the sand.

Here, and again later, something happens that almost slips by unnoticed, and it is the tenderest turn of all. The very question that belongs to God turns and falls upon the people. At the end of his life Moses sings it out: who is like you, Israel, a people saved by YHWH? The God without equal makes a people without equal. That people has nothing in itself. It is a band of runaway slaves, stubborn and small and a few months later already dancing around a calf of gold. It is matchless because it belongs to Him. If you dare apply it to yourself, here lies the secret of all the worth you will ever possess. It comes from the One you belong to, apart from what you achieve. Who is like you? That question rests entirely on Him who carried you through the sea.

So the question is born, as a judgment against the false gods in Egypt and as a song of praise to the true God at the sea. It will travel, from this shore to the mountain, from the mountain to the temple, from the temple to the ruins of a prophet who bore the question itself as his name, until it finds its deepest answer. That answer lies deeper than the water that swallowed an army. It lies with a God who carries the guilt and finds joy in it. But that lies ahead. Here, on the far shore of the sea, only this stands fast, and it is enough to dance over: no one is like YHWH.

*A note on the source text. The song at the sea: Exodus 15:1–21; the double question in verse 11; the arrival and the eternal kingship in 15:17–18; Miriam and the women in 15:20–21. No pleasure in the death of the wicked: Ezekiel 33:11. "Who is like you, Israel": Deuteronomy 33:29; cf. 2 Samuel 7:23. Steadfast love as the driving force: Exodus 15:13; "on eagles' wings [...] to Myself": Exodus 19:4. In the excursus: Yam and Baal in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle; Marduk and Tiamat in Enuma Elish, tablets IV–V; "thus far": Job 38:11; Psalm 65:7; 89:9; the sea in swaddling bands: Job 38:8–9. The divine Name rendered as YHWH.*