Exodus 15

“LORD,” usually printed in all capital letters, is a name of God that appears around 7,000 times in the Christian Bible, which makes it the most common way of referring to God.  The lower-case “Lord” is a translation of the Hebrew word Adonai. It refers to God as our master, our life coach, or the boss. He’s in charge of us, and we try to obey him. “LORD” is the spelling most Bibles use when the writer refers to the name of God. Moses asked God what his name was, and God said Moses should tell the Israelite ancestors of the Jews that his name is “I AM” (3:14). In the original Hebrew language, the name is spelled with only consonants—no vowels. It’s an ancient shorthand, to save hides used to make scrolls. The name is YHWH. Without knowing which vowels, most scholars have settled on YAHWEH, pronounced YAH-way. God’s name is so sacred to many Jews that they refuse to speak it. Instead, they’ll use names that describe the character of God, such as Adonai, which means “my Lord.” They won’t even write the name. In English, they’ll spell the name G-d.

Many Bibles say “Red Sea.” But the Hebrew words are yam suph, “sea reeds.” In the previous chapter of Exodus, Moses and the Hebrew refugees escaped through a path God made in this body of water. Scholars usually track Moses and the Hebrews escaping Egypt by walking southeast, out of the Nile Delta fields and toward the Red Sea and the Sinai Peninsula. They would have passed through lake regions along what is now the Suez Canal, which connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. These lakes and ponds reportedly had reeds growing along the banks, like the ones the Bible says grew along the Nile River and helped anchor Baby Moses in a basket (Exodus 2:3).

Earlier, it was the raised hand of Moses that did great things. This song, however, says nothing about that. It’s God who gets the credit for everything Moses did.

Philistines settled on the southwest coast of what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territory called the Gaza Strip. They had superior iron weapons when Israelites were using softer bronze. It took the Israelites several centuries to overpower the Philistines, which they finally did in the time of King David. Earlier, the Philistine’s had overwhelmed King Saul’s army, killing him and most of his sons. Before that, Philistines had crushed the Israelite army and captured the Ark of the Covenant, Israel’s most sacred object, a gold-covered wooden box that held the Ten Commandments.

Miriam’s “Song of the Sea,” as some scholars call it, is written in a very ancient style of Hebrew—a style much older than the rest of Exodus. Some say it’s the oldest surviving version of the story of the Hebrews leaving Egypt on their famous exodus home to what is now Israel and Palestinian Territories. Some date the Hebrew style of writing as far back as the 1200s BC, when some say was about the time Moses lived and led the exodus out of Egypt. Others put Moses 200 years earlier, in the 1400s BC.

Location of Shur is unsure. Some place it just east of the lush Nile Delta, known as Goshen, along the Wadi Tumilat, a dry riverbed that leads toward the Sinai Peninsula. Others place it further east, along the Mediterranean coast at the northern end of the Sinai.

Marah is the Hebrew word for “bitter.”

Possibly an oasis called Springs of Moses, Uyun Musa, where a geologist in 1907 reported there were 12 springs and a grove of palm trees. Some springs and trees remain. The oasis is about 10 miles (16 km) down the Gulf of Suez, on the Sinai Peninsula. Another possibility is about 50 miles (80 km) further south: an oasis at Wadi Gharandel, one of the best watering holes in the western Sinai. A “wadi” is a dry riverbed that can turn into a stream when it rains.