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Exodus 15: What the Passage Says

95 claims across 27 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Exodus 15 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

After crossing the sea, Moses and the Israelites sing a song to the LORD about the drowning of Pharaoh's chariots and army, the LORD's power over the enemy, and his leading of the people he redeemed. The song says the nations of Philistia, Edom, Moab, and Canaan will hear and be afraid, and that the LORD will bring his people in and plant them on the mountain of his inheritance. Miriam and the women repeat the song with hand drums and dancing. Israel then travels three days without water, finds bitter water at Marah which the LORD makes sweet, receives a rule and a law along with a promise about the diseases of Egypt, and camps at Elim.

Claim by Claim

  1. 15:1
    • Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the LORD.
    • They spoke, saying the words that follow.
    • The singer declares he will sing to the LORD.
    • The reason given is that the LORD has triumphed gloriously.
    • The LORD has hurled the horse and its rider into the sea.
  2. 15:2
    • The LORD is the singer's strength and song.
    • The LORD has become salvation for the singer.
    • The singer says this one is his God.
    • The singer says he will glorify him; the word is ambiguous and can mean either praise him or provide him a dwelling.
    • The LORD is the God of the singer's father.
    • The singer says he will exalt him.
  3. 15:3
    • The LORD is a man of war.
    • The LORD is his name.
  4. 15:4
    • The LORD cast Pharaoh's chariots and his army into the sea.
    • Pharaoh's choicest officers were drowned in the Sea of Reeds.
  5. 15:5
    • The deeps covered them.
    • They went down into the depths like a stone.
  6. 15:6
    • The LORD's right hand is majestic in power.
    • The LORD's right hand shatters the enemy.
  7. 15:7
    • In the greatness of his majesty the LORD tears down those who rise against him.
    • The LORD sends forth his burning anger.
    • His anger consumes them like stubble.
  8. 15:8
    • At the blast of the LORD's nostrils the waters piled up.
    • The flowing waters stood upright like a heap.
    • The deeps congealed in the heart of the sea.
  9. 15:9
    • The enemy said he would pursue.
    • The enemy said he would overtake.
    • The enemy said he would divide the spoil.
    • The enemy said his desire would be satisfied upon them.
    • The enemy said he would draw his sword.
    • The enemy said his hand would destroy them.
  10. 15:10
    • The LORD blew with his wind.
    • The sea covered them.
    • They sank like lead in the mighty waters.
  11. 15:11
    • No one among the gods is like the LORD.
    • No one is like the LORD, who is majestic in holiness.
    • The LORD is awesome in praises.
    • The LORD does wonders.
  12. 15:12
    • The LORD stretched out his right hand.
    • The earth swallowed them.
  13. 15:13
    • In his steadfast love the LORD led the people he redeemed.
    • The LORD guided them in his strength to his holy dwelling place.
  14. 15:14
    • The peoples hear and tremble.
    • Anguish seizes the inhabitants of Philistia.
  15. 15:15
    • The chiefs of Edom are dismayed.
    • Trembling seizes the leaders of Moab.
    • All the inhabitants of Canaan melt away.
  16. 15:16
    • Terror and dread fall upon them.
    • By the greatness of the LORD's arm they are still as a stone.
    • This lasts until the LORD's people pass over.
    • The people are those the LORD acquired.
  17. 15:17
    • The LORD will bring them in.
    • The LORD will plant them on the mountain of his inheritance.
    • The LORD made that place for his own dwelling.
    • The sanctuary is one the LORD's hands established.
  18. 15:18
    • The LORD will reign forever and ever.
  19. 15:19
    • Pharaoh's horse went into the sea with his chariots and his horsemen.
    • The LORD brought the waters of the sea back over them.
    • The children of Israel walked on dry ground in the midst of the sea.
  20. 15:20
    • Miriam was a prophetess.
    • Miriam was the sister of Aaron.
    • Miriam took a timbrel in her hand.
    • All the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.
  21. 15:21
    • Miriam answered them.
    • Miriam told them to sing to the LORD.
    • The reason given is that the LORD has triumphed gloriously.
    • The LORD has hurled the horse and its rider into the sea.
  22. 15:22
    • Moses made Israel set out from the Sea of Reeds.
    • They went out into the wilderness of Shur.
    • They went three days in the wilderness.
    • They found no water.
  23. 15:23
    • They came to Marah.
    • They could not drink the water of Marah.
    • The water was bitter.
    • For that reason the place was named Marah.
  24. 15:24
    • The people murmured against Moses.
    • The people asked what they would drink.
  25. 15:25
    • Moses cried out to the LORD.
    • The LORD showed him a piece of wood.
    • He cast the wood into the waters.
    • The waters became sweet.
    • There he set a statute and an ordinance for them.
    • There he tested them.
  26. 15:26
    • He said the words that follow.
    • The condition is that you diligently listen to the voice of the LORD your God.
    • The condition includes doing what is right in his eyes.
    • The condition includes giving ear to his commandments.
    • The condition includes keeping all his statutes.
    • If so, he will put none of the diseases he placed on Egypt upon you.
    • He placed those diseases on Egypt.
    • The reason given is that he is the LORD who heals you.
  27. 15:27
    • They came to Elim.
    • At Elim there were twelve springs of water.
    • At Elim there were seventy palm trees.
    • They camped there by the waters.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

15:1
Verses 1–18 are a poem, usually called the Song of the Sea, and its Hebrew is archaic, many scholars think it is among the oldest surviving Hebrew poetry. "LORD" printed in capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew letters usually written YHWH, which Jewish readers traditionally do not pronounce aloud. The KJV's "triumphed gloriously" renders a Hebrew phrase that literally says "he has risen up high" or "he is highly exalted."
15:2
The second half of this line is genuinely uncertain. The Hebrew verb can be read as "I will make a dwelling for him" (the KJV's "prepare him an habitation") or, from a similar-looking root meaning "beautify," as "I will praise him." Modern translations split between the two. "My strength and song" may also mean "my strength and my protection"; the second noun is rare and disputed.
15:3
"A man of war" is a Hebrew set phrase, not a comment on gender or humanity: it is the ordinary term for a soldier or warrior. The line pairs it with "the LORD is his name": that is, the God who bears this name is the one who fights.
15:4
Chariots were the elite arm of an Egyptian army (fast, expensive, and manned by the nobility), so losing them was losing the best of the force. "Red Sea" translates Hebrew *yam suph*, which literally means something like "sea of reeds"; which body of water it refers to has been argued over for centuries.
15:6
"Right hand" is a standard ancient idiom for a person's strength and power, the hand that holds the weapon. It says nothing about God having a body; the poem uses it the way English uses "a strong arm."
15:7
"Excellency" in 1611 meant greatness or towering superiority; it has nothing to do with the modern polite title. "Stubble" is the dry stalks left standing in a field after harvest, which catch fire instantly and are gone in seconds.
15:8
In Hebrew the same word means both "nose" and "anger," and another single word covers "breath," "wind," and "spirit", so this image of snorting breath piling up the water is also an image of anger, and picks up again in verse 10.
15:9
Dividing the spoil means sharing out captured goods and people after a battle, the normal payoff for an ancient army. The KJV's "my lust shall be satisfied" uses "lust" in its older, general sense of appetite or desire; the Hebrew word is *nephesh*, "throat" or "appetite," so the boast is roughly "I will gorge myself on them."
15:10
Lead is a very heavy metal. Drop a lump of it in water and it goes straight down. That is how fast the song says the army sank.
15:11
"Among the gods" is how the poem's first hearers would have framed a claim of supremacy, measuring their God against the gods the surrounding nations worshiped. "Fearful in praises" is ambiguous in the Hebrew as well as the English: it can mean "awesome in praiseworthy deeds" or "to be held in awe while being praised."
15:12
The Hebrew word for "earth" also serves as a name for the underworld, the realm of the dead. So the line can be heard as the ground opening or as the grave taking them in; the ambiguity is in the original.
15:13
"Redeemed" translates a legal term: to buy something back, or to pay the price to free a slave or a captive relative. It was an ordinary commercial and family word before it was a religious one. "Your holy home" is left open, readers have taken it as Sinai, as the land of Canaan, or as the future sanctuary.
15:14
Philistia (the KJV's "Palestina") is the coastal strip of what is now southern Israel and Gaza, home to the Philistines, a people of Aegean origin who settled there and were Israel's rivals for centuries.
15:15
The KJV's "dukes" simply means chiefs or clan leaders and has nothing to do with European nobility. Edom, Moab and Canaan name the peoples and territories lying along the route between Egypt and the land Israel is heading for. "Melt away" is an idiom for courage draining out of a person, the way English says someone's nerve dissolved.
15:16
"The greatness of thine arm" is the same bodily idiom as "right hand" in verse 6, sheer strength. "Purchased" or "bought" uses a commercial verb for acquiring property, echoing the "redeemed" of verse 13; the picture is of a people bought out of slavery.
15:17
"Inheritance" is a land term: the portion allotted to a family or a people as their permanent holding. "The mountain" and "the sanctuary" are not identified here, and readers have disagreed for a long time over whether the poem means Sinai, the hill country of Canaan generally, or the temple mount at Jerusalem.
15:19
"Horsemen" may mean chariot crews rather than riders on horseback; cavalry in the modern sense was not yet the standard way armies used horses in this period.
15:20
A prophetess is a woman who speaks on God's behalf; Miriam is the first woman in the Bible given the title. The timbrel was a small hand-held frame drum, and drumming and dancing by women was the customary way to greet an army returning victorious. Calling her "the sister of Aaron" is the ordinary way of placing a person in a family.
15:21
"Answered them" describes call-and-response singing: one voice leads a line and the group sings it back. Miriam's words repeat the opening of the song in verse 1, so she is likely leading the refrain rather than starting a new song.
15:22
Shur is a desert region east of Egypt, on the edge of the Sinai peninsula. Three days was a standard span for a journey stage, and three days without water is close to the limit of survival in that country.
15:23
The point is a pun that English loses: *marah* is the Hebrew word for "bitter," so the place is called Bitter because the water is bitter. Naming a site after what happened there is common in these narratives.
15:24
"Murmured" in the KJV means grumbled or complained out loud, usually with the sense of a crowd turning against its leader rather than quiet muttering.
15:25
"Statute and ordinance" is a standard legal pair in Hebrew for a fixed ruling and a binding decision, the vocabulary of law codes. "Proved them" in the KJV means tested them, put them to the test; it does not mean demonstrated anything.
15:26
"The diseases I put on the Egyptians" points back to the plagues of chapters 7–12, particularly the boils. "Give ear" is simply "listen"; the whole verse stacks four near-synonyms for obeying, which is normal Hebrew legal style rather than four separate demands.
15:27
Elim is an oasis; twelve springs and seventy palms mark it as unusually well watered after the desert of Shur. The KJV's "threescore and ten" is an older way of saying seventy, a score is twenty.

Read Exodus 15