Moses' Song and Prophetic Voice

Swimming in the Red Sea

¹⁴ The peoples have heard; they tremble; 

pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia. 

¹⁵ Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed; 

trembling seizes the leaders of Moab; 

all the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away. 

¹⁶ Terror and dread fall upon them; 

because of the greatness of your arm, they are still as a stone, 

till your people, O Lord, pass by, 

till the people pass by whom you have purchased. 

¹⁷ You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain, 

the place, O Lord, which you have made for your abode, 

the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established. 

¹⁸ The Lord will reign forever and ever.” 

Exodus 15:14–18

I mentioned in my most recent sermon that the Old Testament authors expected a future application. I wanted to provide an example so that we can think a little more about what this might look like. I found this nugget in a random old book from my shelf. In Exodus, the story is about God delivering Israel out of Egypt. Exodus 15 is the song Moses sang to praise the Lord for God’s deliverance through the Red Sea. Now you’d think Moses would stick to the script: God saved Israel from Pharaoh. He saved us from the Egyptians. But instead, what we hear is that the present deliverance is just the beginning. Moses knew that this salvation would echo throughout Israel’s history, and so as he wrote his song, he wrote it expecting it to be fulfilled first in Canaan when they entered the promised land, and then it will continue to be fulfilled.

So we see in the text that the song of deliverance from the Red Sea is a song about salvation in Canaan and setting up their mountain sanctuary (which doesn’t happen for hundreds of years after Moses.) Look at verse 14: The peoples have heard, they tremble. (even though Moses wrote this 40 years before that trembling). Look at verse 15: the chiefs of Edom are dismayed, trembling seizes Moab, the inhabitants of Canaan melt. We know that the Canaanites didn’t melt away until Jericho 40 years later. Remember that it was 11 of the 12 spies that melted away in fear within a year of this song. Canaan only melted when Israel was at the gate of Canaan, when God would cause a miraculous dividing of another body of water, the Jordan river.  

As he sings, Moses is the first to make the Exodus Israel’s story of salvation. And every time Israel needs salvation, shadows of the Exodus from Egypt come to the front. And this is why in the New Testament, we see that Jesus’ life is compared to a new Exodus. Jesus life, death and resurrection are the biggest story of salvation: for he will save his people from their sins, and it is the greatest story that shows us that God is king and reigning forever and ever. This teaches us to hope: God keeps his word and will continue to keep his word.