Exodus 15 — The Song at the Sea and the Waters Made Sweet

Today’s Passage: Exodus 15

We come now to the morning after the great deliverance, and I want you to read this chapter the way you would listen to a song sung by people who have just been saved from certain death. The sea is behind them. The chariots of Egypt lie broken under the water, and Israel stands safe on the far shore in the light of a new day, and out of that shore the very first song in all the Bible rises up. They do not argue their case, they do not explain themselves, they simply sing, because the heart that has been rescued has to praise or it will burst. And listen to what the song is about. It is about the LORD, from beginning to end, the LORD who is a warrior, the LORD who is their strength and their song and their salvation, the LORD who will one day plant them on His holy mountain and reign over them forever. Then Miriam takes up a tambourine and the women follow her with dancing, and the whole camp becomes one voice of worship. But do not close the chapter there, because the story does not end at the singing. Three days later the same rescued people are thirsty and grumbling at a pool of bitter water, and there, in that hard place, the LORD shows them a new name for Himself, the God who heals. Read it slowly, and let both halves speak, the song on the shore and the sweetened water in the desert, for together they teach us who this God is.

As you read, hold this: On the far shore a redeemed people learns to sing, and the God who saved them by the sea proves Himself the God who heals them in the desert.

Exodus 15:1-3 (BSB)

¹ Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the LORD: “I will sing to the LORD, for He is highly exalted. The horse and rider He has thrown into the sea. ² The LORD is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise Him, my father’s God, and I will exalt Him. ³ The LORD is a warrior, the LORD is His name.

Hear how the song begins, for it begins with the LORD and never once leaves Him. I will sing to the LORD, for He is highly exalted, and already we know what kind of song this is. It is not a song about how brave Israel was at the sea, for Israel was not brave; only a night before they had cried out in terror between the water and the chariots. It is a song wholly about God, about what His hand did while His people stood still and watched, and the very first picture it reaches for is the horse and its rider hurled into the sea, the whole armored might of Egypt tossed into the deep as easily as a man throws a stone.

Then comes the line that is the beating heart of the whole chapter, and I would have you learn it by heart. The LORD is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation. Notice how three great words are gathered onto one Person. He is their strength, the power they never had in themselves. He is their song, the very reason and substance of their praise. And He has become their salvation (יְשׁוּעָה) yeshuah, pronounced yeh-shoo-AH. Strong's H3444, salvation, deliverance, rescue. When the song says “He has become my salvation,” the word on Israel’s lips is yeshuah, and it is one of the great words of the whole Bible. It means deliverance, rescue, the saving help that comes from outside a man when he cannot save himself, and here it is sung by a people who have just watched it happen with their own eyes at the sea. They do not say the LORD gave them a salvation, as though it were a thing handed over and held at arm’s length. They say He has become their salvation, so that the rescue and the Rescuer are one, and the God who saved them is Himself the safety they now stand in. , not merely the one who gives salvation from a distance but the salvation itself, so near and so personal that they can call Him by that name. And out of that overflowing confession the singer claims Him twice over, He is my God, and my father’s God, the God of the promises made long ago to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, now proved faithful before their very eyes. The LORD is a warrior, the song says, the LORD is His name, and there is no boasting in Israel anywhere in it, only a people pointing away from themselves to the God who fought for them.

Hold that word a moment longer, because it carries a treasure the singers on the shore could not yet see. From this same root Israel would form its dearest names, and centuries later an angel would tell a carpenter in Nazareth to call Mary’s son by a name built on this very word, Yeshua, “the LORD saves,” the name we say as Jesus. So when Israel sang by the sea that the LORD had become their salvation, they were singing, without knowing it, the meaning of a name not yet spoken, the name of the One in whom the LORD would become the salvation of the whole world. The song at the sea and the name above every name run down to us from the same deep root, and both say the same thing, that salvation is not something we achieve but Someone God gives.

Exodus 15:4-8 (BSB)

⁴ Pharaoh’s chariots and army He has cast into the sea; the finest of his officers are drowned in the Red Sea. ⁵ The depths have covered them; they sank there like a stone. ⁶ Your right hand, O LORD, is majestic in power; Your right hand, O LORD, has shattered the enemy. ⁷ You overthrew Your adversaries by Your great majesty. You unleashed Your burning wrath; it consumed them like stubble. ⁸ At the blast of Your nostrils the waters piled up; like a wall the currents stood firm; the depths congealed in the heart of the sea.

Now the song turns to look back at the sea itself, and it dwells on the greatness of what God did there, not with cold reporting but with wonder heaped upon wonder. Pharaoh’s chariots and his whole army, the finest of his officers, all of it cast into the sea and drowned, and the picture the song loves best is of stones sinking. They went down into the depths like a stone, it says, that terrible weaponed host that had made the earth tremble now dropping silent and heavy into the dark water. The proud strength of Egypt, which had held Israel four hundred years, sank without a struggle the moment God lifted His hand.

And see how the singers cannot stop returning to that hand. Your right hand, O LORD, is majestic in power; Your right hand, O LORD, has shattered the enemy. Twice in one breath they name the right hand of God, the ancient symbol of His strength and His action, and they marvel that this same hand which shattered the armies of Egypt is the hand that shelters them. Then the song reaches for the boldest image of all, and we should read it as the poetry of praise, not a lesson in weather. At the blast of Your nostrils the waters piled up, it sings, as if the very breath of God, the same breath that drove back the sea, had heaped the waters into standing walls and frozen the deep solid in the heart of the sea. It is the language of a people straining to say how effortless the miracle was for God, that what cost Israel nothing but the courage to walk cost God nothing but a breath. We do well to let the song teach us to praise like this, extravagantly, reaching for image after image, because the God who saves us is greater than any single word can hold.

Exodus 15:9-12 (BSB)

⁹ The enemy declared, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake. I will divide the spoils; I will gorge myself on them. I will draw my sword; my hand will destroy them.’ ¹⁰ But You blew with Your breath, and the sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters. ¹¹ Who among the gods is like You, O LORD? Who is like You—majestic in holiness, revered with praises, performing wonders? ¹² You stretched out Your right hand, and the earth swallowed them up.

Here the song does something wonderfully vivid, letting us hear the enemy’s own boasting before it shows us his end. Listen to Pharaoh’s army working itself up to the chase, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoils, I will draw my sword, my hand will destroy them, five hungry vows tumbling one after another, all of them beginning with the little word I. It is the voice of proud man sure of his own strength, counting the plunder before the battle is even joined. And then, against that whole rush of boasting, the song sets a single quiet line about God. But You blew with Your breath, and the sea covered them. All the enemy’s I will, I will, I will is answered by one breath of God, and the boasters who meant to gorge themselves on Israel sink like lead in the mighty waters. There is a lesson in that contrast we should carry out of the chapter, that the loudest human boasting is undone by the gentlest movement of God.

And out of that comes the great cry at the center of the whole song, a question that is really the highest praise. Who among the gods is like You, O LORD? The nations around Israel had their crowded shelves of gods, and Egypt most of all, yet none of them had done anything like this. Who is like You, the song asks, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? Here the praise climbs above the sea and the chariots to the LORD Himself, marveling not only at what He did but at who He is, holy beyond compare, so far above every rival that the question answers itself. There is no one like Him. And having lifted their eyes that high, the singers return once more to the deed, You stretched out Your right hand, and the earth swallowed them, that same mighty hand at work again, sweeping the enemy down into the deep.

Exodus 15:13-16 (BSB)

¹³ With loving devotion You will lead the people You have redeemed; with Your strength You will guide them to Your holy dwelling. ¹⁴ The nations will hear and tremble; anguish will grip the dwellers of Philistia. ¹⁵ Then the chiefs of Edom will be dismayed; trembling will seize the leaders of Moab; those who dwell in Canaan will melt away, ¹⁶ and terror and dread will fall on them. By the power of Your arm they will be as still as a stone until Your people pass by, O LORD, until the people You have bought pass by.

Now the song lifts its head and looks forward, and this is one of the most beautiful turns in the whole chapter, for a people barely one day free begins to sing about where God is taking them. With loving devotion You will lead the people You have redeemed, they sing, and the words are full of tenderness. God does not merely rescue His people and leave them standing on the shore. He leads them, with steadfast covenant love, and He guides them by His strength all the way to His holy dwelling. They are a redeemed people now, bought out of Egypt at the cost of the lamb’s blood, and the same God who saved them will not abandon them halfway. He means to bring them home.

And as the song looks down the road ahead, it sees the nations along the way losing their courage. Philistia, Edom, Moab, Canaan, all the peoples whose lands lie between the sea and the promise, the song sees them hearing the news of what God did to Egypt and melting with fear. Trembling will seize them, it says, terror and dread will fall on them, and they will stand as still as a stone until the LORD’s people have passed safely by. There is great comfort tucked into this for a pilgrim people. Israel had every reason to dread those nations, but the song teaches them that their God goes ahead of them, and that the fear of the LORD, running out in front of His redeemed, will hold back the strong until His own have passed. Twice it calls them the people God has bought, the people He has purchased, and a bought people is a people God will surely bring the whole way through.

Exodus 15:17-18 (BSB)

¹⁷ You will bring them in and plant them on the mountain of Your inheritance—the place, O LORD, You have prepared for Your dwelling, the sanctuary, O Lord, Your hands have established. ¹⁸ The LORD will reign forever and ever!”

Here the song comes to its summit, and it is a mountain and a throne. You will bring them in and plant them, it sings, and what a word that is for a wandering people to sing, planted, set down and rooted like a tree that will not be pulled up again, on the mountain of God’s own inheritance, in the place He has prepared for His dwelling, the sanctuary His own hands have established. On the very morning of the exodus, before a single mile of desert has been crossed, the redeemed already sing of the end of the journey, the place where God Himself will dwell among them. Their eyes are lifted clear past the sand and the years of wandering to the home God is preparing, and they sing of it as sure, because the God who split the sea will not fail to finish what He has begun.

And then the whole song gathers itself into one last ringing shout, the highest note of all. The LORD will reign forever and ever. Everything the song has celebrated, the warrior, the strength, the salvation, the leading, the planting on the holy mountain, all of it rests at last on this, that the LORD is King and His reign has no end. The chariots of Pharaoh are gone, the proudest throne on earth lies broken under the sea, but the throne of the LORD stands forever. It is the truth that steadies every believing heart in every age, for the last book of the Bible takes up this same shout when the kingdoms of the world have all become the kingdom of our God, and the redeemed sing again that He shall reign forever and ever. The song at the sea was already reaching, all those centuries ago, for that unending kingdom.

Exodus 15:19-21 (BSB)

¹⁹ For when Pharaoh’s horses, chariots, and horsemen went into the sea, the LORD brought the waters of the sea back over them. But the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground. ²⁰ Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women followed her with tambourines and dancing. ²¹ And Miriam sang back to them: “Sing to the LORD, for He is highly exalted; the horse and rider He has thrown into the sea.”

The Bible pauses to set the whole scene plainly before us once more, so that we do not miss why they are singing. Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and horsemen went into the sea, and the LORD brought the waters back over them, but the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground. There in one sentence are the two peoples and their two ends, the pursuers drowned and the redeemed walking free, and the difference between them is nothing in Israel and everything in God. That dry path through the water is why there is a song at all.

And then comes Miriam, and I love that Scripture gives us her name and her office both, Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister. She takes a tambourine in her hand, and all the women follow her out with tambourines and dancing, and she sings the great refrain back over the whole camp, Sing to the LORD, for He is highly exalted, the horse and rider He has thrown into the sea. So the song that Moses began, Miriam answers, the men singing and the women singing back, the whole people caught up together in one act of worship on the shore. There is something deeply right in this, that a salvation so great is not praised by one voice alone but by all of them, young and old, men and women, everyone who was brought through the water lifting the same song. Real deliverance makes a whole people sing, and it puts instruments and even dancing into the hands of those who a day before were slaves. This is worship as God loves to receive it, a rescued people so glad in what He has done that they cannot keep still.

Exodus 15:22-24 (BSB)

²² Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea, and they went out into the Desert of Shur. For three days they walked in the desert without finding water. ²³ And when they came to Marah, they could not drink the water there because it was bitter. (That is why it was named Marah.) ²⁴ So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What are we to drink?”

Now the tone of the chapter changes, and we should feel the change, for it is the very change that happens so often in our own walk with God. The singing is barely over. Moses leads the people away from the sea into the Desert of Shur, and for three days they walk without finding any water at all, and when at last they reach a pool at a place called Marah, the water there is bitter and they cannot drink it. The name Marah means bitter, and the Bible tells us the place was named for the taste of its water. And here is the sobering thing. The same people who had just sung so gloriously on the shore now grumble, What are we to drink? Three days. Three days between the tambourines and the complaining.

We should not read this with a curled lip, as though we would have done better, for the truth is that this is the pattern of every human heart, and it is written down here honestly so that we might see ourselves in it. It is one thing to praise God in the hour of a great deliverance, when the sea is behind us and the enemy is drowned. It is another to trust Him three days later in a dry place with a real thirst and no water in sight. The mountaintop song does not automatically carry us through the desert. And notice too that God led them here. He is the one who brought them from the sea into this waterless place and up to this bitter pool, which means the hard, dry stretch was no accident and no sign that He had forgotten them. He had a lesson to teach at Marah that could not be taught on the shore.

Exodus 15:25-26 (BSB)

²⁵ And Moses cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a log. And when he cast it into the waters, they were sweetened. There the LORD made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there He tested them, ²⁶ saying, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in His eyes, and pay attention to His commands, and keep all His statutes, then I will not bring on you any of the diseases I inflicted on the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you.”

See what Moses does with the grumbling around him. He cries out to the LORD, and that is the whole difference between Moses and the crowd. The people complain to Moses; Moses takes the trouble to God. And the LORD answers, not with rebuke but with provision, showing him a log, and when Moses casts it into the bitter pool the water is made sweet, and the thirsty nation drinks. God did not lead them to Marah to leave them there. He led them to the bitter water in order to show them, in the very place of their thirst, that He is able to turn bitter into sweet. And the Bible tells us plainly what He was doing, that there He tested them, proving whether they would trust Him and walk in His ways.

Then comes the promise, and at the end of it, a new name for God that is one of the treasures of the whole Old Testament. If you will listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God, He says, and do what is right in His eyes and keep His commands, then the plagues He laid on Egypt He will not lay on them, for, He says, I am the LORD who heals you (יְהוָה) YHWH, pronounced yah-WEH,. Strong's H3068, the LORD, the covenant name of God (YHWH). At Marah the LORD gives His people one of the great “I am” names by which He would be known forever, YHWH Rapha, the LORD who heals you. The name joins the holy covenant name of God, the name by which He had bound Himself to Abraham’s children, to the plain and tender verb rapha, the word used all through Scripture for the mending of a wound, the closing of a breach, the making whole of what was sick or broken. It is the same word the prophets would use for the healing of a people gone astray and the binding up of the brokenhearted. So here, beside a pool of newly sweetened water, God takes this healing word onto Himself as a name, and tells His people that this is who He is toward them. . Think of where they are standing when He says it, at a pool that only moments before was bitter and undrinkable and is now sweet in their mouths. The healed water is the sign of the healing God. He who made the bitter pool sweet declares Himself the God who heals His people, and He binds that healing to a life of trusting obedience, a people who listen to His voice and walk in His ways living under the care of a God who mends what is broken. Marah, the place of bitterness, becomes the place where God reveals Himself as the Healer.

And notice how fitting the place is for such a name. It was at Marah, the bitter place, that He revealed Himself as the Healer, for it is precisely in our bitter places that we come to know God as the one who heals. He did not announce this name on the shore in the hour of triumph but three days later in the desert, at the bitter water, among a grumbling and thirsty people. That is His way. He lets us come to the end of our own sweetness so that we might learn a name for Him we could never have learned in easier country, the LORD who heals. And the whole Bible bends toward the fullness of that name, for the God who sweetened the water at Marah is the God who sent His Son to bind up the brokenhearted and to heal us at the deepest place of all, so that by His wounds we are healed. YHWH Rapha, the LORD who heals you, is a name that runs from a desert pool all the way to the cross.

Exodus 15:27 (BSB)

²⁷ Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they camped there by the waters.

And look where God leads them next, only a little further on. From bitter Marah they come to Elim, and Elim is all abundance, twelve springs of clear water and seventy palm trees, and there beside the good water the weary people make their camp and rest. There is a gentleness in this ending that we should not pass over quickly. The same God who let them thirst three days and tested them at the bitter pool now brings them to a place of overflowing water and shade, twelve springs, one it almost seems for each of the tribes, and the tall palms standing green over their tents. He did not lead them into the desert to destroy them but to teach them, and having taught them at Marah that He is the God who heals, He leads them straight on to Elim to show them that His hand is full of good gifts for a people who will trust Him.

Let the chapter close in your heart just where it closes on the page, with a redeemed people camped by cool water under the palms. They began the day singing on the shore, they stumbled at the bitter pool, and now they lie down at last beside the springs of Elim, cared for the whole way by the God who saved them at the sea. That is the shape of the pilgrim life, and it is a comfort to every believer walking it. There is a song at the sea, and there is bitter water in the desert, and there is Elim not far beyond, and through all of it the same LORD leads His people, their strength and their song and their salvation, the God who heals them, bringing them at last to the water and the rest He has prepared.