Understanding the Song We Sing to God Every Day: An Investigation of Az Yashir, the Song of the Sea R. Shai Held – [email protected] Click here for audio!

¹Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord. They said:
I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously;

Horse and driver He has hurled into the sea.
²The Lord is my strength and might;

He is become my deliverance.

This is my God and I will enshrine Him; the God of my father, and I will exalt Him.
³The Lord, the Warrior—Lord is His name!
⁴Pharaoh’s chariots and his army He has cast into the sea;

And the pick of his officers are drowned in the Sea of Reeds.
⁵The deeps covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone.
⁶Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power,
Your right hand, O Lord, shatters the foe!
⁷In Your great triumph You break Your opponents;
You send forth Your fury, it consumes them like straw.
⁸At the blast of Your nostrils the waters piled up,
The floods stood straight like a wall;
The deeps froze in the heart of the sea.
⁹The foe said, “I will pursue, I will overtake,
I will divide the spoil; my desire shall have its fill of them.

I will bare my sword—my hand shall subdue them.”

¹⁰You made Your wind blow, the sea covered them;

They sank like lead in the majestic waters.
¹¹Who is like You, O Lord, among the celestials;

Who is like You, majestic in holiness,

Awesome in splendor, working wonders!
¹²You put out Your right hand, the earth swallowed them.
¹³In Your love You lead the people You redeemed;

In Your strength You guide them to Your holy abode.
¹⁴The peoples hear, they tremble; Agony grips the dwellers in Philistia.
¹⁵Now are the clans of Edom dismayed;

The tribes of Moab—trembling grips them;

All the dwellers in Canaan are aghast.
¹⁶Terror and dread descend upon them;

Through the might of Your arm they are still as stone—

Till Your people cross over, O Lord,

Till Your people cross whom You have ransomed.
¹⁷You will bring them and plant them in Your own mountain,

The place You made to dwell in, O Lord,

The sanctuary, O Lord, which Your hands established.
¹⁸The Lord will reign for ever and ever!

¹⁹For the horses of Pharaoh, with his chariots and horsemen, went into the sea; and the Lord turned back on them the waters of the sea; but the Israelites marched on dry ground in the midst of the sea.

²⁰Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her in dance with timbrels. ²¹And Miriam chanted for them:
“Sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; Horse and driver He has hurled into the sea.”

“I am,” He said, “the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

¹⁶“And you lift up your rod and hold out your arm over the sea and split it, so that the Israelites may march into the sea on dry ground...”
²¹Then Moses held out his arm over the sea and the Lord drove back the sea with a strong east wind all that night, and turned the sea into dry ground. The waters were split
²⁶Then the Lord said to Moses, “Hold out your arm over the sea, that the waters may come back upon the Egyptians and upon their chariots and upon their horsemen.” ²⁷Moses held out his arm over the sea, and at daybreak the sea returned to its normal state, and the Egyptians fled at its approach. But the Lord hurled the Egyptians into the sea.

¹⁹The angel of God, who had been going ahead of the Israelite army, now moved and followed behind them; and the pillar of cloud shifted from in front of them and took up a place behind them, ²⁰and it came between the army of the Egyptians and the army of Israel. Thus there was the cloud with the darkness, and it cast a spell upon the night, so that the one could not come near the other all through the night.

⁷And the Lord continued, “I have marked well the plight of My people in Egypt and have heeded their outcry because of their taskmasters; yes, I am mindful of their sufferings. ⁸I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians and to bring them out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the region of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.”

And He said, “I will be with you; that shall be your sign that it was I who sent you. And when you have freed the people from Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain.”

In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites left the land of Egypt, in the month of Ziv—that is, the second month—in the fourth year of his reign over Israel, Solomon began to build the House of the Lord.

I have now built for You a stately House, a place where You may dwell forever.

When Yiftah arrived at his home in Mizpah, there was his daughter coming out to meet him, with timbrel and dance! She was an only child; he had no other son or daughter.

When the [troops] came home [and] David returned from killing the Philistines, the women of all the towns of Israel came out singing and dancing to greet King Saul.

¹⁰You rule the swelling of the sea;

When its waves surge, You still them.
¹¹You crushed Rahav; he was like a corpse;

With Your powerful arm You scattered Your enemies.
¹²The heaven is Yours,

The earth too;

The world and all it holds—

You established them.
¹³North and south—

You created them;

Tabor and Hermon sing forth Your name.
¹⁴Yours is an arm endowed with might;

Your hand is strong;

Your right hand, exalted.

³Speak these words:

Thus said the Lord God:

I am going to deal with you, O Pharaoh king of Egypt,

Mighty monster, sprawling in your channels,

Who said, My Nile is my own;

I made it for myself.
⁴I will put hooks in your jaws,

And make the fish of your channels

Cling to your scales;

I will haul you up from your channels,

With all the fish of your channels

Clinging to your scales.
⁵And I will fling you into the desert,

With all the fish of your channels.

You shall be left lying in the open,

Ungathered and unburied:

I have given you as food

To the beasts of the earth

And the birds of the sky.