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. 

We now return to the account of the Israelites, after they had finally rid themselves of the oppression of Egypt. After the miraculous escape through the Red Sea, it would appear that the Israelites understood that the Egyptian tyranny was permanently behind them, and so they wrote a song to commemorate the occasion.

Of course, the songs in the Old Testament lose much of their artistic merit in translation. They read awkwardly in their English counterpart, devoid of meter and tune. Instead it is the themes and ideas of the song that have been prioritized, and so those are the qualities that I will focus this study on.

This song was clearly meant to be a song of praise, focused on extolling the power and salvation of the Lord in freeing captive Israel. More specifically, it is focused on the event of God overthrowing the Egyptians in the sea. The song summons that particular image in its very first sentence, and will return to it again and again. The song is firmly tied to that event, and seems to have been written while the thrill of it was still fresh in the mind.

And this is the great power that rests in music. The thrill and rapture of an isolated moment can be imprinted into the notes and lyrics, like a mold, and then those emotions can be cast and recast into the hearts of future generations. I believe this was the purpose of this song, to transport all future believers to that singular moment of God’s power made manifest upon the waters of the Red Sea, though we never stood upon the shores ourselves.