Literary Devices – Shemot 15/0

Literary Devices – Shemot 15

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Structure

Prof. Cassuto suggests that the song of the sea can be divided into three strophes, each ending with a celebration of Hashem's supremacy, formulated with a poetic doubling.¹ The division is further marked by the fact that the  penultimate verse² of each stanza contains a comparison of the drowning Egyptians to either stone or lead. The poem would be divided as follows:³

• Verses 1-6: Introduction
• Verses 7-11: Details of the Miracle
• Verses 12-end:  Wish for Future Salvation⁴

Wordplay and Alliteration

There are several examples of wordplay in the song:

Examples

• גאה – The word “גאה” in verse 1 has the double meaning of “has triumphed” and “has surged”.⁵  This forms a play on words, as Hashem triumphs by engulfing His enemies in surging waters.⁶ 
• Rising and falling – The Song at the Sea contains language that describes heights and depths, illustrating the reversal of the Egyptians’ fortunes and the sovereignty of Hashem. Hashem is described as exalted (verses 1, 2, 7) and the water is described as piled up and as standing like a wall (verse 8), whereas the Egyptians are described as plunging to the depths of the sea (verses 1, 4, 5, 10). Even words that refer to the doomed enemy sometimes have an ironic association with rising up, like רמה (hurled) in verse 1 which sounds like "רום" (to raise or exalt)⁷  and קמיך  (enemies) in verse 7, which relates to the root "קום" (to get up).
• Alliteration of "א" – Almost every word of the first half of verse 9 begins with the letter "א", meaning:"I will", (אָמַר אוֹיֵב אֶרְדֹּף אַשִּׂיג אֲחַלֵּק שָׁלָל ). The alliteration reflects the content of the verse, highlighting Paroh's arrogance and self confidence in his victory.

Articles

The following articles contain general discussion of wordplay in Tanakh:

• See Wordplay in Biblical Hebrew: An Eclectic Collection, by Gary A. Rendsburg, for exploration of various forms of Biblical wordplays.
• See Wordplay in Ancient Near Eastern Texts, by Scott B. Noegel, for a book-length treatment of the range of permutations of wordplays in Tanakh and in other Ancient Near Eastern texts.

Symbolism and Imagery

• The Song at the Sea includes various, sometimes contradictory, images of the Egyptians’ fate: Hashem hurls the Egyptians into the sea, smashes them, burns them, and causes them to be swallowed by the earth. Most of these have no counterpart in the prose depiction of the event.
• See Through the Kaleidoscope of Literary Imagery in Exodus 15: Poetics and Historiography in Service to Religious Exuberance, by Prof. Pamela Barmash, which argues that these diverse images of destruction are meant to depict the awesomeness of Hashem’s power rather than the historical reality of what happened at the sea. These various motifs of divine punishment re-emerge throughout Tanakh and are borrowed and fused together here because the "superimposed images express what a single image cannot", intensifying Hashem's triumph .

Parallelism

Examples

As is typical of Biblical verse, much of the Song at the Sea is structured with poetic parallelism. For example, see:

• מַרְכְּבֹת פַּרְעֹה וְחֵילוֹ יָרָה בַיָּם  / וּמִבְחַר שָׁלִשָׁיו טֻבְּעוּ בְיַם סוּף (v. 4)
  
• אָז נִבְהֲלוּ אַלּוּפֵי אֱדוֹם / אֵילֵי מוֹאָב יֹאחֲזֵמוֹ רָעַד / נָמֹגוּ כֹּל יֹשְׁבֵי כְנָעַן (v. 15)

Articles

• For more information about the nature of Biblical parallelism, see Prof. Mayer I. Gruber’s article The Meaning of Biblical Parallelism: A Biblical Perspective and Prof. Adele Berlin’s Grammatical Aspects of Biblical Parallelism.⁸

¹ See verses 6, 11, and 16. In each case the verse opens, diverges to mention the subject or to elaborate upon it, and then doubles the opening before finishing the thought, as in verse 6: "יְמִינְךָ י"י נֶאְדָּרִי בַּכֹּחַ יְמִינְךָ י"י תִּרְעַץ אוֹיֵב".  This specific type of poetic doubling is noted by Rashbam as being a common phenomenon; see his (and Rashi's) comments on verse 6 for other examples. Cf. R. D"Z Hoffmann who suggests that the Song of the Sea is responsive; Moshe sings each stanza and the nation replies with these poetic doublings.

² In the third strophe, the imagery is found slightly earlier in the stanza.

³ One might alternatively divide the song into two halves, verses 1-12 which speak of the current miraculous salvation and verses 13-end which speak of future redemption.

⁴ One weakness of this division is that verse 12 appears to still be speaking of the miracle at the sea, and one would have expected it to be part of the second stanza. See Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (New York, 2019), who suggests that this verse acts as a segue, mentioning the "earth" (rather than sea) as swallowing the Egyptians to draw the reader into the theme of this last stanza, that of the promised land.

⁵ See, for example, its usage in  Yechezkel 47:5 and Tehillim 89:10 to refer to surging waters.

⁶ See Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (New York, 2019).

⁷ See Amos Hakham in Da'at Mikra (Jerusalem, 1991):264  who notes the connection to the root “רום” and further suggests that it might be chosen specifically since "רם" is at times paired with the word “גאה”, so the reader associates the two in verse 1 here as well.  Here, though, “רמה” ironically has the opposite meaning of רם and גאה, as Paroh is hurled down, while only God is lifted up.

⁸ See also Prof. Robert Alter’s The Art of Biblical Poetry pp. 3-61, Prof. Adele Berlin’s The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism, and Prof. James Kugel’s The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History.