ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATION NETWORK EXODUS DR. DAVID ADAMS #40 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> So far the whole book has been a story. Is there any special significance to the fact that we have this song of Moses preserved for us in Chapter 15? >> It is very observant of you to pick out the fact that we have here a poem, a song, inserted in the context of a narrative. And whenever in Old Testament books in particular but even in New Testament books, whenever you have poetry inserted in the middle of a narrative like this, that's usually a pretty good clue to you that something important is happening in the text. And so you should be aware of it. Let's look at some of the songs just briefly in the Pentateuch. And you know, just look at what functions they serve. The first -- one of the first big songs in Genesis is Genesis 49, the Blessing of the Sons of Jacob. This song stands really at the end of the book of Genesis and marks the end of Genesis and the beginning of the transition to the book of Exodus. It really summarizes not just the story but the fact that the promise has been passed from Abraham down to the point where it's reached the 12 tribes of Israel as represented by the 12 sons of Jacob. In fact, at the end of the poem, this point is made specifically sort of now the 12 tribes are in place here. So this poem serves an important function in concluding the book of Genesis, and making the transition from a mere family story, the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to the story of the nation that we have in the book of Exodus. In Exodus 15 then we have the Song by the Sea, the Song of Moses here that we're getting ready to talk about. So we'll come back to that one. This one has a special function within the book of Exodus. But in Deuteronomy 33 and 34 we have two other poems, the Blessing of Moses and the Song of Moses. And these sort of perform the same function in the book of Deuteronomy that the blessing of Jacob performed in the book of Genesis, it sort of brings the story to a conclusion, summarizes all the main points and sets the stage for how the story will go forward from here. Similarly in Judges Chapter 5, the Song of Deborah. Here we don't have a poem at the end of a book like we do in Genesis 49 or Deuteronomy 33 and 34. We have a story in the middle. And the Song of Deborah, which celebrates a victory that God gave the Israelites, is really a lot like this poem in Exodus 15. It has many characteristics in common, both in terms of poetry and language. And so that many scholars sort of see a close connection between these two poems in Judges 5 and Exodus 15. It celebrates what God has done and serves sort of like an exclamation point to illustrate how important an event has just occurred in the story. Basically any time in a narrative that the pace of the story slows down, that can be a sort of sign to you that something important is happening in the story, something that you should pay more attention to. Well, when you hit a poem like this in the story, the pace doesn't just slow down. It stops completely. And that should be a big red flag for us that this is an important point in the story. Now, let's turn our attention to this particular poem in Exodus 15. This particular poem has a sort of unique and distinctive function. At least certainly the only time in a biblical book that a poem performs this function on such a large scale. There are some smaller similar examples. But to see that we will have to remind ourselves I think of the narrative ark of the book again. So this will be a little bit of review. But it will help us to see the function of the poem here. Remember the first thing we saw was that Exodus 1 to 14 constitutes this drama of redemption. And in this drama the conflict is primarily between Yahweh and the gods of Egypt as represented by the conflict between Moses and Pharaoh. We saw as the story unfolds the setting of the scene in Chapters 1 to 3. The initiating of the narrative ark in the dialogue between Moses and Yahweh in Chapter 3. We saw from Chapter 4 Verse 18 through Chapter 12 how the conflict sort of rises as we move through the plague narratives. And then in Chapter 13 and 14 after the Passover we get the resolution of the conflict in Israel's departure from Egypt and the destruction of the army of Pharaoh. So that's the narrative ark of the first part of the book. Now let's look ahead to the narrative ark of the second part of the book. Exodus 15 Verse 22, to Chapter 40. This deals not with the redemption of the people of Israel. That redemption has been accomplished and is finished by the time we reach Chapter 15 and is no longer a topic of discussion in the book after that. A few sort of retrospective mentions of what happened before. But it's no longer an active part of the plot. Instead the focus is on the relationship between Yahweh and Israel and what it means for Israel to be the people of Yahweh. So after we leave the shore of the Red Sea at the beginning of Chapter 16, we get sort of rising conflict between Yahweh and Israel in the desert. Then we come to Mount Sinai where they receive the torah and the covenant -- in the covenant and the instructions for worship in Chapters 25 through 31. And then in Chapters 32 and 34 we get the covenant crisis, the central crisis about the golden calf and its resolution. And then finally at the end of the book we get the building of the tabernacle, which serves really to kind of tie up all the loose ends and sort of is -- really is kind of a "they all lived happily ever after" ending to the book of Exodus. So now that we've reminded ourselves of the two narrative arks of the book, let's take a look at the poem. The poem divides itself neatly into two parts. Exodus 15 Verses 1 to 12 is a review of this drama of salvation. It recounts the story of Israel's departure from Egypt and the destruction, especially the destruction of the army. It celebrates Yahweh as the salvation of Israel in Verse 2 and describes him as a victorious warrior. And it ends with what I kind of like to think of as the thematic phrase of the first half of the poem. In Verse 11 the question "Who is like you among the gods, oh, Yahweh?" It's a rhetorical question because the answer is obvious. We've been describing the situation throughout the poem. The answer is no one is like Yahweh among all the gods. So that's the first half of the poem. In the second half of the poem we get the recognition that Yahweh will lead his redeemed people in his mercy. In his kesid. He will terrify the nations. And he will plant his people in his presence and rule over them forever. Well, notice the change in the second half of the poem. It's no longer about the redemption of the people of Israel at all. Redemption is only mentioned once. And that's when it says he will lead the people that he's already redeemed. Now we're looking not backwards to what happens but forward to what's going to happen to Israel from this point on. And so we get a change in the perspective within the poem. The first part focuses on what's happened. The second part of what will happen. The first part focuses on Yahweh as the redeemer. The second part focuses on Yahweh as the one who leads his people in his grace. So if we were going to carefully analyze the structure of the poem, we would see that we have an opening narrative in Verse 1. The first part of Verse 1 anyway. And then we have this retrospective on the drama of redemption in Verses 1B to 12. And then in Verses 13 to 18 we have a prospective on the future of Israel as the people of God. And then Verses 19 to 21, a closing narrative frame. So we have a very symmetrical kind of structure. And right in the middle of this structure is what we might call a hinge. It's a place where the poem pivots, where it moves from being about what's happened to being about what's going to happen. It pivots not only in terms of time but also in terms of theme. And the important thing about this poem is that the hinge within the poem is also the hinge in the whole book. It's at this very point -- and you can argue -- some people say it's between Verses 12 and 13. Some people like to say it's in the middle of Verse 13. I won't argue that point. I'll give you whichever side you prefer at that point. But what's clear is that the function of the poem is to serve as a hinge between the two parts of the book. And the poem itself contains within it the same hinge. So the structure of the poem reflects the function of the poem in the book as a whole. And so in this sense it's an almost remarkable kind of literary organization here. As I say, there are some smaller examples in some of the Psalms, hinge verses in the Psalms, where you get the first part of the psalm about one thing and the second part about the other and the verse in the middle that kind of deals with both. It serves as a hinge. But it's remarkable to have a poem serve this function in such a large literary piece as the entire book of Exodus. And we should not fail to recognize the importance of this poem, not only theologically in underscoring both of the main theological themes of the book of Exodus, but also in terms of its literary function. It's very important for both, both theology and, if you will, literary function within the book of Exodus. So it does -- there is, David, some special significance to the fact that we have this song here right in the middle of the narrative in Exodus 15. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***