Exodus 15:2. The Lord is my strength and song; And he is become my salvation: He is my God; and I will prepare him an habitation: My father's God; and I will exalt him.
This holds throughout, as the attentive reader may observe; except that, in one or two verses, it seems as if the two choirs sung their parts, and then united together in one strain; as, Exodus 15:15.
1st Choir. Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed: 2nd Choir. The mighty men of Moab, Trembling shall take hold upon them: All. All the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away.
Of this alternate method of singing among the Hebrews, we shall have occasion to speak often, especially in the Psalms, and in the Prophets: and an attention to it will serve to explain many passages.
Exodus 15:2. I will prepare him an habitation— If the remark we have made on the former verse be just, that the latter clause throughout this song is exegetical of the preceding; then they are right in their version, who render this, and I will honour or praise him. The LXX have it δοξασω, and the Vulgate, glorificabo, I will glorify: agreeably with whom, Houbigant renders it laudabo, I will praise. Those who conceive our version to be right suppose that reference is here made to the tabernacle speedily to be built by Moses in the wilderness, an opinion which they support by the words of the 13th verse. Houbigant would render my father's God,—my God is my father; for the ancient Hebrews, says he, never say the God of my father, in the singular, but the God of my fathers.
The Lord is a man of war— It is unquestionable, that, throughout this chapter, Jehovah should have been uniformly preserved in the version. Houbigant renders it bellator fortis, Jehovah is a strong warrior. The next verse expresses the conquest gained by this Almighty Warrior. See 1 Samuel 16:18; 1 Samuel 17:33. The word ירה iarah, rendered cast in the 4th verse, is explanatory of רמה ramah, which we render thrown in the 1st verse; and seems to give us the image of an arrow shot from the bow; as if Jehovah had launched them forth into the deep, as easily as an archer shoots an arrow from his bow.