Some people have doubted the authenticity of the Song of the Sea on the basis that no one could spontaneously produce a poem like this.
Are you familiar with freestyle rap battles? You know – rap music – that fast-talking rhythmic style with complex rhyme schemes. You get two rappers improvising together – back and forth (usually insulting each other).
Think of the Song of the Sea as Moses’ freestyle rap in response to Pharaoh. As we saw last time, it is likely that Moses knew about the Battle of Kadesh – and the poem that celebrated Ramesses great victory. The Song of the Sea has a handful of verbal parallels with Ramesses’ song – and that’s the way a rap battle works. You take a few of your opponent’s lyrics and throw them back in his face! – weaving them into a very different story that up-ends the narrative of your foe.
Now, I don’t doubt that the song was edited when it got written down. The point is not that this is a verbatim transcript of the exact words Moses sang. Rather, this is the song that Moses and the people of Israel sang. When it got written down and placed in the book of Exodus it was written in a form that Israel could continue to sing for centuries.
Think of it this way: the annual Passover celebration was not intended as a historical reproduction of the first Passover; in the same way, the Song of the Sea was not intended as a verbatim transcript of the Song that Moses sang – but a version for Israel to sing and remember for all history.
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