serve Him for ever as their King. This was the goal, to which the redemption from Egypt pointed, and to which the prophetic foresight of Moses raised both himself and his people in this song, as he beholds in spirit and ardently desires the kingdom of Jehovah in its ultimate completion.[1]
The song closes in Exo 15:18 with an inspiring prospect of the time, when “Jehovah will be King (of His people) for ever and ever;” and in Exo 15:19, it is dovetailed into the historical narrative by the repetition of the fact to which it owed its origin, and by the explanatory “for,” which points back to the opening verse.
verses 19-21
In the words “Pharaoh's horse, with his chariots and horsemen,” Pharaoh, riding upon his horse as the leader of the army, is placed at the head of the enemies destroyed by Jehovah. In Exo 15:20, Miriam is called “the prophetess,” not ob poeticam et musicam facultatem (Ros.), but because of her prophetic gift, which may serve to explain her subsequent opposition to Moses (Num 11:1, Num 11:6); and “the sister of Aaron,” though she was Moses' sister as well, and had been his deliverer in his infancy, not “because Aaron had his own independent spiritual standing by the side of Moses” (Baumg.), but to point out the position which she was afterwards to occupy in the congregation of Israel, namely, as ranking, not with Moses, but with Aaron, and like him subordinate to Moses, who had been placed at the head of Israel as the mediator of the Old Covenant, and as such was Aaron's god (Exo 4:16, Kurtz).
- ↑ Auberlen's remarks in the Jahrb.f. d. Theol. iii. p. 793, are quite to the point: “In spirit Moses already saw the people brought to Canaan, which Jehovah had described, in the promise given to the fathers and repeated to him, as His own dwelling-place where He would abide in the midst of His people in holy separation from the nations of the world. When the first stage had been so gloriously finished, he could already see the termination of the journey.”...“The nation was so entirely devoted to Jehovah, that its own dwelling-place fell into the shade beside that of its God, and assumed the appearance of a sojourning around the sanctuary of Jehovah, for God went up before the people in the pillar of cloud and fire. The fact that a mountain is mentioned in Exo 15:17 as the dwelling-place of Jehovah is no proof of a vaticinium post eventum, but is a true prophecy, having its natural side, however, in the fact that mountains were generally the sites chosen for divine worship and for temples; a fact with which Moses was already acquainted (Gen 22:2; Exo 3:1, Exo 3:12; compare such passages as Num 22:41; Num 33:52; Mic 4:1-2). In the actual fulfilment its was Mount Zion upon which Jehovah was enthroned as King in the midst of his People.
