Exodus 15 Summary and Study Guide

The Bible’s first recorded song was sung on a shoreline, by a crowd of former slaves who had walked across the sea bed that morning. This Exodus 15 summary and study guide takes the song apart, then follows the singers three days east to the water they could not drink.

Setting the Stage

Years before any of this, Moses stood in front of Pharaoh with one request: let Israel go three days’ walk into the wilderness to hold a feast to their God (Exodus 5:3). Pharaoh refused, and refused again through plague after plague, until the night his own firstborn died and he drove Israel out.

Israel now has the three days it asked for. Exodus 15 is what they do with them. The song comes first, on the far bank of the sea. The three days come after, and at the end of them there is water they cannot drink.

Comprehensive Exodus 15 Summary

Israel stands on the far shore of the sea. The army that chased them out of Egypt is gone, and Moses leads the whole nation in a song. The men carry the verses and the women answer them, timbrels in hand, led by Moses’ sister Miriam.

The song looks backward first. God threw horse and rider into the sea. He shattered Pharaoh’s chariots and drowned his best officers. The Egyptians had come boasting about what they would take and what they would kill, and God answered with a breath of wind.

Then the song turns and looks forward. The nations along the road ahead will hear about this and lose their nerve.

God will bring Israel in and plant them in a land of His own choosing, and He will reign for ever. From beginning to end, the song mentions Moses nowhere. It is entirely about God.

Then the singing stops and the walking starts. Moses leads Israel into the wilderness of Shur, and for three days they find no water at all. When water finally appears, at a place called Marah, it is too bitter to swallow. The people turn on Moses and demand to know what they are supposed to drink.

Moses does the one thing the people do not do. He cries out to God. God shows him a tree, Moses throws it into the spring, and the water turns sweet.

There God gives Israel a rule to keep and puts them to the test, promising that if they will listen to Him and obey Him He will not bring on them the diseases He brought on Egypt, because He is the LORD who heals them. From there He brings them to Elim, where there are twelve wells and seventy palm trees, and they camp beside the water.

One Word Summary

• Song: the chapter’s first act, and Scripture’s first.
• Bitter: what Marah means, and what the water was.
• Test: God’s own word for Marah.

In One Sentence

Moses and Miriam lead Israel in a song for the God who drowned Pharaoh’s army, and three days later, standing over the bitter spring at Marah, the same people grumble against Moses until God sweetens the water and names Himself their healer.

Theme of Exodus 15

Exodus 15 is about trusting God after the rescue is over. Two ideas run alongside that one. God is unlike anything else people have ever worshipped (verse 11), and the song looks down the road to nations Israel has not met and a land God has promised to plant them in (verses 13 to 18). So the trust the chapter asks for reaches forward as well as back, which is exactly what the thirsty people at Marah cannot manage.

Exodus 15 Outline

• Exodus 15:1-5: The song opens with God throwing horse and rider into the sea, and Israel calling Him their strength, their salvation and their fathers’ God.
• Exodus 15:6-10: God’s right hand shatters the enemy, the Egyptians boast about the plunder they will take, and one breath of wind buries them.
• Exodus 15:11-12: Israel asks who among the gods is like the LORD, holy, awesome and working wonders.
• Exodus 15:13-16: The song turns to the road ahead, where Philistia, Edom, Moab and Canaan will hear what happened and lose their courage.
• Exodus 15:17-18: God will bring Israel in and plant them in His own mountain, and He will reign for ever and ever.
• Exodus 15:19: The narrator breaks in to restate the fact behind the song, that Pharaoh’s horses went into the sea and Israel walked through on dry ground.
• Exodus 15:20-21: Miriam the prophetess takes a timbrel, the women follow her with timbrels and dancing, and she leads them in the song’s refrain.
• Exodus 15:22-24: Moses leads Israel into the wilderness of Shur, they go three days without water, and at bitter Marah the people murmur against him.
• Exodus 15:25-26: Moses cries out, God shows him a tree, he throws it in and the water turns sweet, and God gives Israel a statute, an ordinance and the name the LORD that healeth thee.
• Exodus 15:27: They arrive at Elim, twelve wells and seventy palm trees, and camp beside the water.

The Song of the Sea

Verses 1 to 18 are a poem, and it is the first song recorded anywhere in Scripture. Matthew Henry called it the most ancient song we know of, and the King James keeps its old shape rather than smoothing it out.

It opens with the line everything else hangs on:

“I will sing unto the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. 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.”

Exodus 15:1-2

I am going to sing to the LORD, because He has won a glorious victory: He has hurled the horses and their drivers into the sea. The LORD is where my strength comes from and what my singing is about, and He has saved me. He is my God and I will honour Him, the God my forefathers worshipped, and I will lift Him high.

The song has two halves. Verses 1 to 12 look back at what God did at the sea. Verses 13 to 18 look forward to what He is going to do in the land. The first half breaks into three shorter runs, verses 2 to 5, verses 6 to 10, and verses 11 to 12, and each one ends on the same fact: the Egyptians went under.

It may have been sung by two choirs rather than one. Verse 21 repeats verse 1 almost word for word, and commentators including the Pulpit Commentary, Ellicott and Barnes read that as the refrain rather than as a shorter version sung afterwards. On that reading Moses led the men through the verses and Miriam led the women in the answer, coming in each time a run of verses closed. The men sang the story; the women sang the chorus back.

It set the pattern for every victory song after it. Deborah sang after Sisera fell (Judges 5), Hannah sang when Samuel was born (1 Samuel 2:1-10), David sang when God delivered him from Saul (2 Samuel 22), and Mary sang when she was carrying Jesus (Luke 1:46-55). Each one does what Moses did here: rescue first, then a song about the God who did it.

Observations from Exodus 15

The song leaves out the man who led it (Exodus 15:1-18)

Eighteen verses of poetry, and Moses is in none of them. Neither is Aaron, and neither is Miriam until the narrator names her in verse 20. Every line is about what God did with His right hand, His breath, His wrath, His mercy. Verse 1 has Moses leading a victory song about a day he stood in the middle of, and he is left out of it, which is what a chapter about trusting God rather than a leader needs.

Egypt’s boast is four sentences long and God answers it in one (Exodus 15:9-10)

Verse 9 hands the microphone to the enemy: “I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.” I will chase them, I will catch them, I will split up what they are carrying, I will get what I want out of them, I will pull my sword and wipe them out.

Four times he says what he will do, three times he says what belongs to him. Verse 10 is God’s reply in one line: “Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them.” God breathed out, and the water closed over them. The song sets a long boast next to a short breath and lets the reader hear the difference.

The same picture falls on both sides (Exodus 15:5, 15:16)

In verse 5 the Egyptians “sank into the bottom as a stone.” They went down like a rock, which is what men in heavy bronze chariot armour would do. In verse 16 the nations ahead of Israel “shall be as still as a stone.” They will freeze like a rock.

Forty years later Rahab told Israel’s spies that Jericho had heard how God dried up the Red Sea, and that the people of the land were fainting with fear and their hearts had melted (Joshua 2:9-11), so the song’s forward half came true. That fear did not last for ever: by Numbers 20:14-21 Edom was confident enough to refuse Israel passage and come out against them.

Marah names the water and the mood (Exodus 15:23-24)

Marah means bitter, and verse 23 gives the place that name because of what was in the spring. By verse 24 the word fits the people as well as the water. Naomi reaches for the same word later on, telling the women of Bethlehem to stop calling her Naomi and call her Mara instead, because God had dealt bitterly with her (Ruth 1:20). Verse 24 is also where the word “murmured” first appears in the Bible.

Israel had already complained at the sea in Exodus 14:11-12, but this is the first time Scripture puts that name to it, and the same word runs on through Exodus 16:2, Exodus 17:3 and repeatedly through Numbers. The habit gets its name at a spring three days out of Egypt, which is the chapter’s warning about what a rescued people can still become.

The chapter is held together by water (Exodus 15:1-27)

There is too much water at the start, enough to bury an army. Then there is none for three days.

Then there is water that cannot be drunk. Then there is water made sweet. Then there are twelve wells.

Every stage of Israel’s first week out of Egypt is measured in what the water is doing, and the God who is dangerous in it at verse 4 is the God who provides it at verse 27.

Difficult Verses Explained

What does it mean that “the LORD is a man of war”?

It means God is mighty in battle, and the song says it because Israel did no fighting at all. Psalm 24:8 calls Him the same thing. Verse 3 describes what happened at the sea, where the only army that moved was God’s. Scripture also calls Him the God of peace (Romans 15:33), and both are true of the same God: He makes peace with those who come to Him and He judges those who set themselves against Him.

Was Moses promising to build God a house in Exodus 15:2?

The King James wording here follows a minority reading. “I will prepare him an habitation” comes from an old Jewish paraphrase that took the word to mean building a sanctuary.

The Greek Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate and most modern translations read it instead as “I will glorify him,” which also matches the line right after it, “I will exalt him.” Moses is honouring God here, not promising Him a building. God gives Moses no instruction about a dwelling until Sinai, several chapters later.

Who are “the inhabitants of Palestina” in Exodus 15:14?

They are the Philistines. The Hebrew word is Phelasheth, which means Philistia, the coastal strip the Philistines held along the Mediterranean. “Palestina” in the King James is an old Greek form of that name, and it later spread to cover the whole land. The verse is naming the first hostile people on the road out of Egypt, not making any statement about the modern Middle East.

If God promised in Exodus 15:26 to keep Israel free of disease, why did they suffer later?

Because the promise is conditional, and verse 26 states the condition four separate ways in a single sentence: listen to God, do what is right in His sight, take His commandments seriously, and keep His rules.

Moses spells out the other half of the arrangement in Deuteronomy 28:27 and 28:35, where the same diseases fall on Israel if they will not obey. What God gave at Marah was a covenant with terms attached, not a blanket guarantee that nothing would ever go wrong.

Common Misunderstandings

• Exodus 15 does not tell the Red Sea crossing; Exodus 14 does. Chapter 15 remembers it in poetry, which is why the sea appears in verses 4, 5, 8, 10, 12 and 19 without the crossing ever being narrated.
• The Bible never says the tree at Marah stands for the cross. Many teachers read it that way, and they have a reason, since the New Testament calls the cross a tree in Acts 5:30, Galatians 3:13 and 1 Peter 2:24. Exodus itself does not draw the line, and respected teachers including Warren Wiersbe decline it as going past what the passage teaches. Hold it as a reading, not as the chapter’s stated meaning.
• Exodus 15:26 is not a promise that believers today will never fall ill. It is a covenant promise given to Israel at one spring in the wilderness, conditional on obedience, and about the diseases God had put on Egypt. God does heal, and Scripture says so plainly elsewhere; this verse is not the place that guarantees it.

Christ Connection

The clearest link is one the New Testament makes itself. Revelation 15:3 shows the redeemed standing beside a sea of glass, having come through great suffering, singing “the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb.” John does not compare the two scenes; he puts the same song in both mouths.

Israel sang on the shore of the Red Sea about a God who drowned the power that held them. The church sings the same song about a God who broke the power of sin and death at the cross. The first song recorded in the Bible is the last one too.

The rest of the chapter runs toward Christ along the same line:

• The sea crossing was a baptism. Paul says Israel “were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Corinthians 10:2), then says plainly that these things “are written for our admonition” (1 Corinthians 10:11). Israel came out of the water a people who belonged to God.
• The song’s own words became the words of salvation. Isaiah takes verse 2 up in Isaiah 12:2, and Psalm 118:14 repeats it. Psalm 118 goes on to speak of the stone the builders rejected becoming the head of the corner (Psalm 118:22), which Jesus applies directly to Himself in Matthew 21:42.
• The LORD who heals is the one who bore our sicknesses. The Hebrew word behind “healeth” in verse 26 is the word Isaiah uses in Isaiah 53:5, “with his stripes we are healed,” and Matthew 8:16-17 applies Isaiah’s words to Jesus healing the sick.
• The question of verse 11 echoes in an ugly place. Israel asks, “Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods?” In Revelation 13:4 the world asks, “Who is like unto the beast?” John may be putting the counterfeit next to the original on purpose.

What holds all four together is the shape of the chapter itself. God rescues His people at a cost to someone else, then leads them through a place where they have nothing, then gives them Himself by name. That is the gospel’s order too, and it is why the song at the Red Sea is still being sung at the end of the Bible.

When, Where, and Why

• When: Within days of the exodus itself, in Israel’s first week of wilderness travel. Elim, where the chapter ends, is the last camp before the wilderness of Sin, which Israel reaches one month after leaving Egypt (Exodus 16:1).
• Where: Out from the sea coast and across the wilderness of Shur, whose name means wall. Marah and Elim are traditionally identified with springs in the north-western Sinai, but the route is genuinely disputed and maps of it vary widely, so the identifications are likely rather than settled. The ground is what the chapter turns on: three days of dry marching, then one bad spring, then an oasis.
• Why: Moses records this because the exodus story is not finished when the enemy drowns. Israel has to become a people who trust God on ordinary days rather than only on the day of the rescue, and Moses puts the song and the complaint in one chapter so that neither can be read without the other.

Key Verses

“Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?”

Exodus 15:11

Who is there like You, LORD, among all the things people call gods? Nobody matches You in holiness, nobody is as awesome even when being praised, nobody does wonders like Yours. This is the summit of the song, and it is the question the whole book of Exodus has been driving at since the plagues began.

“Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation.”

Exodus 15:13

In Your mercy You have led out the people You bought back, and by Your strength You are guiding them to the place where You live. This is where the song stops looking backward. Redemption is not only rescue from something; it is being led somewhere.

“The LORD shall reign for ever and ever.”

Exodus 15:18

The LORD will be king for all time. The song ends on the widest claim it can make and then stops, adding nothing after it.

“And he cried unto the LORD; and the LORD shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them.”

Exodus 15:25

Moses called out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a tree; he threw it into the water and it became drinkable. There God gave Israel a rule to live by, and there He tested them. This verse names what Marah was for, which no other verse in the chapter does. God heals bad water once more in Scripture, through Elisha at Jericho, where He says plainly, “I have healed these waters” (2 Kings 2:21).

Key Lessons from Exodus 15

• The song gives God every line and Moses none, so praise that keeps back some of the credit is not really praise.
• Three days stood between the singing and the murmuring, so remembering what God did is not the same as trusting who God is.
• One spring produced a complaint from the people and a prayer from Moses, so the trouble itself did not decide the response.
• God gave Israel a new name for Himself at the bitter water and nothing new at the oasis, so hard places can teach what comfortable ones cannot.
• Elim came after Marah and not instead of it, so seasons of testing in Scripture have an end as well as a purpose.

To go deeper into the lessons from this chapter, read our full study: Lessons from Exodus 15.

Bible Study Questions

1. The song calls God strength, song and salvation in verse 2. Which of those three is hardest for you to say honestly at the moment, and why?
2. Read verse 9, then verse 10. What does the length of the enemy’s boast next to the length of God’s answer say about human confidence set against God?
3. Israel sang in verse 1 and murmured in verse 24, three days apart. What changed in those three days, and where do you see that same gap in yourself?
4. In verse 24 the people cried out against Moses, and in verse 25 Moses cried out to God. What do you think decides which of those two a person does under pressure?
5. God revealed Himself as the LORD who heals at bitter Marah, and gave Israel nothing new at Elim. Why do you think the new name came at the harder place?
6. Verse 25 says God proved them there. What is God’s purpose in a test when He already knows what the answer will be?

Frequently Asked Questions

Exodus 15, The Full Text (KJV)

Read the full chapter below for reference.

1 Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the LORD, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.

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.

3 The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name.

4 Pharaoh’s chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea: his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red sea.

5 The depths have covered them: they sank into the bottom as a stone.

6 Thy right hand, O LORD, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O LORD, hath dashed in pieces the enemy.

7 And in the greatness of thine excellency thou hast overthrown them that rose up against thee: thou sentest forth thy wrath, which consumed them as stubble.

8 And with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together, the floods stood upright as an heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea.

9 The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.

10 Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters.

11 Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?

12 Thou stretchedst out thy right hand, the earth swallowed them.

13 Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation.

14 The people shall hear, and be afraid: sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestina.

15 Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed; the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them; all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away.

16 Fear and dread shall fall upon them; by the greatness of thine arm they shall be as still as a stone; till thy people pass over, O LORD, till the people pass over, which thou hast purchased.

17 Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O LORD, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the Sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established.

18 The LORD shall reign for ever and ever.

19 For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the LORD brought again the waters of the sea upon them; but the children of Israel went on dry land in the midst of the sea.

20 And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.

21 And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.

22 So Moses brought Israel from the Red sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water.

23 And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah.

24 And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?

25 And he cried unto the LORD; and the LORD shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them,

26 And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.

27 And they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water, and threescore and ten palm trees: and they encamped there by the waters.