Exodus 15:1 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Exodus 15:1
Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the LORD, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.
to sing · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
Moses
מֹשֶׁה֩mo.Sheh
H4872
Mosheh · proper noun, a man's name
children
וּבְנֵ֨יu.ve.Nei
H1121
a son (as a builder of the family name) · conjunction + noun, common masculine plural construct
Israel
יִשְׂרָאֵ֜לYis.ra.'El
H3478
Jisrael · proper noun, a place name
song
הַשִּׁירָ֤הha.shi.Rah
H7892
a song · definite article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
LORD
לַֽיהוָ֔הla.Yah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · preposition + proper noun, a title
spake
וַיֹּאמְר֖וּvai.yo.me.Ru
H559
to say (used with great latitude) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
saying
לֵאמֹ֑רle.Mor
H559
to say (used with great latitude) · preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct
sing
אָשִׁ֤ירָה'a.Shi.rah
H7891
to sing · verb, qal infinitive construct, 1st person common singular
LORD
לַֽיהוָה֙la.Yah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · preposition + proper noun, a title
triumphed
גָאֹ֣הga.'Oh
H1342
to mount up · verb, qal infinitive absolute
gloriously
גָּאָ֔הga.'Ah
H1342
to mount up · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
horse
ס֥וּסsus
H5483
a horse (as leaping) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
rider
וְרֹכְב֖וֹve.ro.khe.Vo
H7392
to ride (on an animal or in a vehicle) · conjunction + verb, qal active participle, masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
thrown
רָמָ֥הra.Mah
H7411
to hurl · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
sea
בַיָּֽםvai.Yam
H3220
a sea (as breaking in noisy surf) or large body of water · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Revelation 15:3 And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty;…
Exodus 15:21 And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.
Psalms 106:12 Then believed they his words; they sang his praise.
Isaiah 12:1-6 And in that day thou shalt say, O LORD, I will praise thee: though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst…
Isaiah 51:10-11 Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass…
Psalms 107:8 Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!
Exodus 18:11 Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods: for in the thing wherein they dealt proudly he was above them.
Psalms 107:21-22 Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Exodus 15:1-21
Having read how that complete victory of Israel over the Egyptians was obtained, here we are told how it was celebrated; those that were to hold their peace while the deliverance was in working (Exo 14:14) must not hold their peace now that it was wrought; the less they had to do then the more they had to do now. If God accomplishes deliverance by his own immediate power, it redounds so much the more to his glory. Moses, no doubt by divine inspiration, indited this song, and delivered it to the children of Israel, to be sung before they stirred from the place where they saw the Egyptians dead upon the shore. Observe, 1. They expressed their joy in God, and thankfulness to him, by singing; it…
Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song - Poetry has been cultivated in all ages and among all people, from the most refined to the most barbarous; and to it principally, under the kind providence of God, we are indebted for most of the original accounts we have of the ancient nations of the universe. Equally measured lines, with a harmonious collocation of expressive, sonorous, and sometimes highly metaphorical terms, the alternate lines either answering to each other in sense, or ending with similar sounds, were easily committed to memory, and easily retained. As these were often accompanied with a pleasing air or tune, the subject being a concatenation of striking and interes…
Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord,.... Which is the first song recorded in Scripture, though no doubt before this time songs of praise were sung to the Lord; the people of God having occasion in all ages more or less to sing his praises. The Jews (n) speak of ten songs, the first of which was sung by Adam, when his sins were forgiven him, and this song of Moses is the second; though sometimes they say (o), from the creation of the world to the standing of Israel by the Red sea, we do not find that ever any man sung a song but Israel; God created the first man, but he sang no song: however, this is the first on record, and is a typical one; Moses the composer…
The Church Fathers
As far as we are concerned, you see, they are dead, because they cannot lord it over us anymore; because our very misdeeds, which made us into their subjects, have been, so to say, sunk and obliterated in the sea, when we were set free by the bath of holy grace.
It is said in the ode, "For he has triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider has he cast into the sea." The many-limbed and brutal affection, lust, with the rider mounted, who gives reigns to pleasures, "he has cast into the sea," throwing them away into the disorders of the world. Thus also Plato, in his book On the Soul, says that the charioteer and the horse that ran off—the irrational part, which is divided in two, into anger and concupiscence—fall down. So the myth intimates that it was through the licentiousness of the steeds that Phathon was thrown out.
"For he has been gloriously extolled" who has already granted us in the bath of regeneration what we have been singing about: "horse and rider he has cast into the sea." All our past sins, you see, which have been pressing on us, as it were, from behind, he has drowned and obliterated in baptism. These dark things of ours were being ridden by unclean spirits as their mounts, and like horsemen they were riding them wherever they liked. That's why the apostle calls them "rulers of this darkness." We have been rid of all this through baptism, as through the Red Sea, so called because sanctified by the blood of the crucified Lord. Let us not turn back to Egypt in our hearts, but with him as our protector and guide let us wend our way through the other trials and temptations of the desert toward the kingdom.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Exodus — The great deliverance wrought for the children of Isreal when they were brought out of the land of Egypt with “a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm” (Ex 12:51; Deut. 26:8; Ps 114; 136), about…
Miriam — Their rebellion. (1.) The sister of Moses and Aaron (Ex. 2:4-10; 1 Chr. 6:3). Her name is prominent in the history of the Exodus. She is called “the prophetess” (Ex. 15:20). She took the lead in the…
Moses — Drawn (or Egypt. mesu, “son;” hence Rameses, royal son). On the invitation of Pharaoh (Gen. 45:17-25), Jacob and his sons went down into Egypt. This immigration took place probably about 350 years…
Music — Jubal was the inventor of musical instruments (Gen. 4:21). The Hebrews were much given to the cultivation of music. Their whole history and literature afford abundant evidence of this. After the…
Poetry — Has been well defined as “the measured language of emotion.” Hebrew poetry deals almost exclusively with the great question of man’s relation to God. “Guilt, condemnation, punishment, pardon,…
Red Sea — The sea so called extends along the west coast of Arabia for about 1,400 miles, and separates Asia from Africa. It is connected with the Indian Ocean, of which it is an arm, by the Strait of…
Songs — Of Moses (Ex. 15; Num. 21:17; Deut. 32; Rev. 15:3), Deborah (Judg. 5), Hannah (1 Sam. 2), David (2 Sam. 22, and Psalms), Mary (Luke 1:46-55), Zacharias (Luke 1:68-79), the angels (Luke 2:13), Simeon…
Armies Of Israel, The · Congratulated on returning victorious — Congratulated on returning victorious
Desert, Journey Of Israel Through The · Israel’s song of praise — Israel’s song of praise
Exodus 15:1-10
1. Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord, and spoke, saying, I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.
1. Tunc cecinit Moses et filii Israel canticum hoc Jehovae, et dixerunt, Cantabo Jehovae, quoniam se magninifice extulit (Heb., magnificando magnificatus est): equum et ascensorem ejus projecit in mare.
2. The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father's God, and I will exalt him.
2. Fortitudo mea et canticum Deus, et fuit mihi in solutem. Hic Deus meus et decorabo eum: Deus patris mei, et ext…
In the song of praise which Moses and the children of Israel sang at the Red Sea, in celebration of the wonderful works of Jehovah, the congregation of Israel commemorated the fact of its deliverance and its exaltation into the nation of God. By their glorious deliverance from the slave-house of Egypt, Jehovah had practically exalted the seed of Abraham into His own nation; and in the destruction of Pharaoh and his host, He had glorified Himself as God of the gods and King of the heathen, whom no power on earth could defy with impunity. As the fact of Israel's deliverance from the power of its oppressors is of everlasting importance to the Church of the Lord in its conflict with the ungodly…
Scholars believe this song of rescue to be one of the oldest preserved examples of the Hebrew language, attesting to its importance in Israel’s thought and faith. It is divided into three stanzas: 15:1-5, 6-12, 13-18. The first stanza rejoices in the Lord’s personal rescue of Moses and his people (note the recurrence of the first-person pronouns). The second exults in the great contrast between the Lord and the Egyptians. The third stanza reflects on what these events would mean for the future.
15:1-5 God’s salvation and rescue had implications for personal faith.
15:1 Moses and the people: In this triumphant moment there was no division between them; they sang as one. • I will sing: The h…
אז ישיר משה THEN SANG MOSES — with regard to the usage of the future ישיר, the meaning is: THEN — i. e. when he saw the miracle it entered his mind that HE WOULD SING a song. Similar is, (Joshua 10:12) “Then Joshua would speak (אז ידבר)”; and similar, (1 Kings 7:8) “and a house he would make (יעשה) for Pharaoh’s daughter”, which signifies “he purposed in his heart that he would make it for her”. So, also, ישיר here signifies: his heart told him that he should sing, and thus did he actually do, as it states, “and they (Moses and Israel) spake as follows, ‘I will sing unto the Lord’”. And in the same way, in the case of Joshua, it means: then (או) — when he saw the miracle mentioned in that na…
Psalms · Of Moses, celebrating the — Of Moses, celebrating the
Readings, Select · General references — General references
Song · War — War
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
