The Song of Victory

The children of Israel were in a hopeless predicament! The Red Sea was before them; the mountains were to the left and right; and Pharaoh and his iron chariots were closing in from the rear.

God's people seemed helplessly trapped like sitting ducks just waiting to be cut down. Believe it or not, though, God purposely had led them into this precarious spot.

It was panic time in the camp of Israel. Men shook with fear, and women and children wept as they huddled around grandparents and other kin. Suddenly, Moses was mobbed by irate family leaders who cried, “Surely this is the end! Weren't there enough graves in Egypt to bury us there? You had to drag us out here to die? We told you in Egypt to leave us alone. It was better to be slaves there than to die in this miserable wilderness!” (see Exodus 14:10-12)

I wonder if even Moses had a moment of trepidation about their circumstances; yet when this man of God wept, the Lord seems to have chided him: “Why do you cry to me? Tell the children of Israel to go forward” (Exodus 14:15, NKJV).

No one in Israel could have known what a great deliverance God was about to bring. Suddenly, the winds parted the sea, and the people walked through the parted waves on dry ground. When Pharaoh and his powerful army tried to follow, the waters began to rage again, closing in and drowning them all.

What a sight it must have been! The people of God looked back from the other side and saw their mighty enemy destroyed like tin soldiers. A song went up in the camp as, once again, they realized God had delivered them from impossible circumstances.

Scripture records their reaction and the song they sang. “Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the Lord, and spoke, saying: ‘I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously! The horse and its rider he has thrown into the sea! The Lord is my strength and song, and he has become my salvation; he is my God, and I will praise him; my father’s God, and I will exalt him’” (Exodus 15:1-2).