Exodus 15a: Hebrew Poetry and Exodus 15
I have a confession to make: I hate poetry.
Especially the kind that doesn’t rhyme.
But I do love Hebrew poetry. It works a bit differently than what we’re used to in English. Hebrew poetry typically doesn’t rhyme words (though sometimes it plays with sounds), but instead it “rhymes” ideas or thoughts.
There were a few poetic features of the Song at the Sea that stood out to me this week, but I had to cut because they would’ve bogged down the sermon with a more technical discussion. I try to limit the amount of Hebrew “stuff” in a sermon so as not to scare people off or make you think you need Hebrew to understand your Bible (though it helps!).
Here are a few fun things that I encountered this week in Hebrew poetry:
1) An example of how Hebrew poetry rhymes thoughts instead of sounds can be found in the second half of verse 2 of chapter 15 (“rhymes” is not really the right word for it, but hopefully you’ll get the picture). The text of verse 2b reads:
this is my God, and I will praise him,
my father’s God, and I will exalt him.
(all translations here taken from ESV unless otherwise noted)
Notice how the second line matches and further develops the thought of the first. We would call this synonymous parallelism, where the two lines say the same thing (but not exactly the same thing – the second line always takes the thought further in some way). “Praise” and “exalt” are both similar in meaning and usage here. “My father’s God” develops further “my God.” It is the same God, but the first line focuses on the personal relationship the songwriter has with Him, and the second focuses on the ancestral history of his people with that God.
Check out verse 6 for another clear example:
Your right hand, O LORD,
glorious in power,
your right hand, O LORD,
shatters the enemy.
2) Verse 5 reads:
The floods covered them;
they went down into the depths
like a stone.
The Hebrew words would look like this, with the brackets indicating a single word:
(The floods) (covered them)
(they went down) (into the depths)
(like a stone)
There are five Hebrew words in this verse. The first four words form what is called a chiastic pattern – or an X-shaped pattern. The first line has the noun first, then the verb. The second line has the verb first, then the noun. So we could also chart it like this:
A (The floods)
B (covered them)
B’ (they went down)
A’ (into the depths)
As an added feature, the nouns both have a slight alliteration (rhyme) with each other, and the verbs do the same. The last word – “like a stone” – throws off the perfect balance with a metaphor. The effect ends up focusing us on that metaphor.
3) Verse 7 has a great example of how dense the Hebrew language is. When translating from one language to the other, there isn’t always an exact equivalent from one word to the other. This is one of the reasons we have so many different Bible translations. Verse 7 is a good example of why this is.
The Hebrew has two words: taheros qameka. To translate it literally into English, we’d get: (you will throw down = taheros) (those who rise up against you = qameka). Two Hebrew words translate into ten English words! Most translations try to slim it down some, with ESV getting it most condensed (“you overthrow your adversaries”), but this is a good example of how extremely concise Hebrew poetry is.
4) Verse 9 is another clear case of alliteration, though this doesn’t exactly rhyme as we would think of a rhyme in English. Here are the Hebrew words. See if you can spot what’s going on (and remember, Hebrew is read from right to left, so start at the right hand of the page).
אמר אויב ארדף אשׂיג אחלק שׁלל תמלאמו נפשׁי
אריק חרבי תורישׁמו ידי
If you look really carefully, you’ll notice that the first five words all start with the same Hebrew letter: aleph (א). In total, there are six out of twelve words that start with an aleph. It’s like a tongue twister (except aleph doesn’t actually make a sound – another weird thing about Hebrew!).
5) When we look at the song as a whole, we notice that the point of view of the poem shifts several times as it goes. The first three verses are written in first person (“I will sing to Yahweh…”). Here, the song talks about God, but not directly to Him.
At verse 4, that perspective changes. Now we are speaking to God in the second person (“You blew with your wind…”). The songwriter is not only talking about God’s mighty deeds, but talking directly to God about them. We switch back to talking about God without talking to Him in the last verse (18 – “Yahweh will reign forever and ever”).
Midway through, we hear the direct quote of the enemy (vs 9). Here the perspective is the songwriter writing about the enemy’s words, but he is still singing this to the Lord.
Perspective can be tricky!
6) Perspective is not the only thing that is tricky. The tense of the Hebrew verbs can also be tricky. Without getting too technical, we have different ways of saying something in the past tense and future tense in English. If I were talking about a cookie, I might say, “I will eat a cookie” (future) or “I ate a cookie” (past).
But in the Hebrew language, we would have to use context to help us determine the difference between past and future. Hebrew shows action that either is complete (a perfect verb) or incomplete (an imperfect verb). But both of these can depict either a past or present action. Sometimes they are practically interchangeable. Verses 7-8 are a good example. Verse 7 is written in the imperfect, whereas verse 8 is written in the perfect (Enns, Exodus, 302-3). Yet both are clearly describing something that has happened in the past (God overtaking the Egyptians in the Sea).
This becomes really tricky when looking at a passage like Exodus 15. Take verse 13, for example. Here it is in ESV:
You have led in your steadfast love
the people whom you have redeemed;
you have guided them by your strength
to your holy abode.
This verse uses the perfect (a completed action). We would naturally want to translate it with the past tense. This works well for the first half of the verse where God has led the people and redeemed them. But has God already guided the Israelites to His holy abode? In what sense can we say that last part of this verse is a completed action?
There are a few ways to deal with this. Many think this is what we call a prophetic perfect, which means it’s a word that describes something that will happen in the future as if it has already happened.
Here’s an analogy: “You’re dead meat.” That insult is describing something that will happen in the future (your enemy becoming as dead as meat), but it’s using present tense language to talk about it. You are so sure they are dead meat, that you’ve already declared it as if it’s already happened.
This may be what’s going on here. It’s so sure that God will lead Israel to “his holy abode” (probably Jerusalem/Mt. Zion/the Promised Land – one or all of these), that God talks about it as if it’s already happened. It’s a form of prophecy. Since God is outside of time, I suppose it’s perfectly legit for Him to talk about such things in such ways.
Other scholars argue that this is indeed past tense, that it was written after the conquest of the land and after Israel had indeed settled in Jerusalem. It would’ve been written, of course, by someone other than Moses, and put here for literary/theological reasons.
I wish I could say that only the liberal scholars believe this, but I see it oftentimes in commentaries by conservative scholars as well. This is a shame, because I think it makes mincemeat of the clear meaning of the text: that Moses and the Israelites sang this song after the Sea closed over the Egyptians.
This is a short(ish) list of some of the features of the Hebrew poetry that stuck out to me as I did my study this week in Exodus 15. Hopefully some of it was helpful and challenging, getting you to slow down and think more deeply about the text in Scripture.
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