Exodus 15

I was an English major (receiving my BA in BS, as we liked to call it) because it was the path of least resistance. I'd always loved reading, wrote elaborately disjointed stories of a dazzlingly derivative nature, and dreamt of working in a library or bookstore (remember those?) while writing on the side. I initially started working on a minor in biology because I had also enjoyed that (particularly because of a terrific hands-on biotechnology class I had taken in high school), but I soon jettisoned that pursuit once I realized how many icky chemistry classes I had to take. (In fact, you pretty much had to earn a chemistry minor in order to fulfill the biology minor). So yes, I had a touchy-feely major that all you well-to-do STEM majors shrewdly spurned, and I couldn't even handle minoring in the science that, as many chemists and physicists will tell you, isn't a real science.

So it may seem surprising that I was never much into poetry. Yes, it can be gorgeous, but you often have to put work into extracting the essence of what the poet is trying to say. As we've all learned, poetry is compression, using the least amount of words to express its point or tell its story, which means that the reader must work to unravel its symbolism and ponder why the poet decided to use dactyls instead of trochees. My own attempts at writing poetry, as I believed I mentioned in one of my first posts, are atrocious. That may also be why I've never been into pop music; I've always preferred the instrumental and occasionally electronic palette of film scores. I do love the sound of large choirs, Stephen Sondheim's works, and most of the songs from Disney animated films. (Never fear, as I also like many worship songs.)

But I won't deny that Biblical poetry features remarkable imagery in its evocation of God or the emotions and struggles that following God engenders. In verse 5, for example, Moses says that "deep waters have covered" the Egyptians, making them sink "to the depths like a stone." Humans do naturally have some buoyancy, while most rocks (besides pumice) most decidedly do not. So I do find a wee bit of morbid humor in the image of an Egyptian warrior plummeting to the depths like a boulder. Moses also uses vivid imagery of God's right hand (verses 6 and 12) as well as a perhaps less distinguished body part in verse 8: "By the blast of your nostrils / the water piled up." This metaphorical image reminds me of my dog: with the blast of her nostrils, she expels scintillating droplets of mucus.

Verse 7 says, "You unleashed your burning anger; it consumed them like stubble." I know "stubble" probably refers to plants here, but I can't help thinking about the stubble on a man's face. On the other hand (or arm, as it were), verse 16 says that God will make his enemies "as still as a stone"--which perhaps makes them sink to the bottom of the sea as in verse 5? (Now you know why I'm no good at analyzing poetry.)

After Moses's eloquent performance, Miriam takes a timbrel (basically a tambourine) and lifts the first stanza from her brother's song--only she takes out the first two words. Intriguingly, she's referred to in verse 20 as "Aaron's sister," with no mention of her relation to Moses himself. As the author of Exodus, was he a bit put out that she not only swiped his song, but got a plethora of women to follow her along as well? "Hey, that's my song! Why didn't I get a bunch of lovely Israelite women to sing along and follow me?" In any case, this is probably one of the earliest records of a musical remix. And who knows--perhaps Moses was more skilled at lyrics ("slow of speech and tongue" my foot, unless he wrote this down beforehand) while Miriam was more of a melodist. Before Rodgers & Hammerstein and Ashman & Menken, there could have been Moses & Miriam.