Song of the Sea(Ex 15:1-18) and the Song of Miriam(Ex 15:19-21) are a scholarly division of a single poem which places the miraculous rescue of the fleeing Israelites at the (Red) Sea on the seventh day of their escape. Commentators’ view is that, the pursuing Egyptians met their final demise during the night, after which, at daybreak Moses and Miriam led the Israelites move forward for their destined land, The Song at the Sea (Exodus 15:1–18) thus is considered as a victory hymn. As Day 7 of the Exodus corresponds with the seventh day of the Pesah festival, the Rabbis prescribed the biblical account of these events, including the hymn itself, as the Torah reading for the seventh day of Pesah. This Song, according to some scholars, is unified as early as 1150 BC. What is important here to see is that these poems, Commentators say, are related to the Baal cycle of the ancient times.
Some of the words in this hymn have not been satisfactorily explained by scholars. There remains grey areas where meaning of some terms of this poem could not be understood. They cannot be deciphered at all unless the real geographical situations of events are explored. The Song continues with each and every step of Moses leading his followers with a belief that Yahweh is with them ‘always’. So the Song identifies the geographical situations of the ‘Sea’, the ‘Temple’ and all the ‘terms’ that have gone into making of the divine spirits of this song.
The ‘Sea’ in this poem marks the ‘Salt Sea’, and the events happened at the ‘junction of the seas’.
The hymn marks the base of the geographical history of the ‘inhabited world’ itself; it is wrong to connect the hymns only with Israelites’ own history. Journey of Moses and his followers from Og-island(Egypt) to Canaan describes on one way or the other ‘whole’ of the ‘inhabited world’.
‘Your right hand, Lord,…’ makes the same view when elsewhere it is said that the ‘Heaven’ is to the right hand of the birthplace of Jesus at Nazareth. The Bible like other ancient texts considers ‘Heaven’ as a real place on earth. From this point of view the ‘sea’ is to the right hand side of the ‘Heaven’.
Similarly, Adonai in the poem identifies Israelites’ faith in ‘One God’; from this word comes the term ‘Adayita’ philosophy of Indian tradition.
Hebrew ‘yeminekha’ s restoration as ‘Right Hand’ by scholars is wrong; it means ‘yem-i-nakha’ where ‘naka’(in Odiya language) means ‘swarga’ or ‘Heaven’. This Heaven stands exactly opposite to ‘Yam’ or Jerusalem. Both ‘Heaven’ and Jerusalem are at the ‘junction of the seas’.
The clans of Edom or the tribes of Moab were the next door neighbours of the ancient Jerusalem. The only problem is that meaning of Moab has been misunderstood by biblical Commentators.
The situation which describes the victory resulting from the Egyptian forces’ ‘descent into the bowels of the earth’, ‘they went down into the depths like a stone…..the earth swallowed them….devouring them with his(Yahweh’s) hot breath as a fire burns straw’ (vss. 6–7)) presents a different geographical picture of the region.
These lines are indicative of the seventh Plague (Hebr makat barad) which is identified with ‘Fire’. Ancient Jerusalem’s first temple pinpoints the site of a volcano; and killing of Egyptians by ‘fire from sea’ may find the deaths caused by volcanic eruption also.