The Song at the Sea

The moment they were safe, Moshe and everyone with him began to sing together. They sang that the horses and riders who had been chasing them went into the sea, and that nobody is greater than Hashem.

The Hebrew literally says “then Moshe will sing”, in the future tense, about something that has already happened. Rashi explains that when Moshe saw the miracle, the song rose in his heart before it reached his mouth; the verse freezes that half-second when you are so full of something that you know you are about to say it. You have had that: the moment before you can speak, when the feeling is already there and the words are still catching up.

Rashi gives two readings of the future form יָשִׁיר. On the plain level, when Moshe saw the miracle it rose in his heart that he would sing, and so he sang. On the level of derash, our Sages found in that future tense a hint to the resurrection of the dead: the Torah says he will sing, and one day he will. The Gemara in Sotah discusses how a whole nation performed a song together: whether Moshe said a line and they repeated it after him, or he led and they answered with the refrain “Ashirah la-Adonai”, which is why the verse needs both “vayomru” and “lemor”. Note too the doubled root in כִּי־גָאֹה גָּאָה: the infinitive absolute set beside the finite verb, Hebrew’s way of saying that He has risen above every rising.

Now the song turns personal: You are my strength, and You saved me. This is my God, and I will make Him beautiful. That means doing mitzvot in a lovely way, like choosing a nice etrog or singing a brachah properly.

How exactly do you make God beautiful? He does not need decorating. There are two old answers: the Targum reads v’anvehu from the word for a dwelling (I will build Him a home, a Mikdash), while the Mechilta reads it from the word for beauty: beautify yourself before Him with the mitzvot, a beautiful lulav, beautiful tzitzit. Notice the order, too. “This is my God” comes first, and only then “the God of my father”. What you were handed matters, but the song starts with what you saw for yourself.

Rashi brings both readings of וְאַנְוֵהוּ side by side. Onkelos takes it from נָוֶה, a dwelling: I will build Him a Sanctuary. The Mechilta takes it from נָאֶה, beauty: make yourself beautiful before Him with the mitzvot (a fine lulav, a fine sukkah, fine tzitzit, a fine sefer Torah); this is the source of hiddur mitzvah as a category. The demonstrative זֶה carries its own weight; the midrash famously says that a maidservant at the sea saw what later prophets did not, because זֶה is the language of pointing at something in front of you rather than describing it from a distance. Grammatically, וְזִמְרָת is an oddity: a construct form with no noun after it, which has led some to read it not as “song” but as a second sense of the root ז-מ-ר meaning strength or produce, as in זִמְרַת הָאָרֶץ. Either way the line moves from what He did for us to what we will do for Him.

In the middle of the song they ask a question: who is like You, Hashem? They are not really looking for an answer. They mean that there is nobody else at all who does wonders like this.

Why put a question in the middle of a song of praise? Because the praise has hit its ceiling. “Nora tehilot” can be read as awesome in praises, or as too awesome for praise, which is why the song stops describing and starts asking instead. There is a real honesty in that: sometimes the truest thing you can say about something enormous is that you cannot finish the sentence. We say this line every morning, in the blessing just before the Amidah.

Rashi glosses בָּאֵלִם as the mighty ones, reading אֵלִם as a word for power rather than as rival gods. The Sages also heard in those same consonants אִלְּמִים, the silent ones: “Who is like You among the silent, who sees His children’s suffering and holds His peace?” That reading, which the Gemara in Gittin cites in its account of the Temple’s destruction, turns a victory song into the question the exile has been asking ever since; the verse carries both, and the distance between them is worth dwelling on. נוֹרָא תְהִלֹּת is likewise ambiguous: awesome in the praises we offer, or so awesome that praise itself becomes hazardous, which is the ground of the old warning against piling up epithets in prayer. And the closing phrase is singular, עֹשֵׂה פֶלֶא: one who does wonder, as though wonder were the material He works in rather than a list of events.