Is Miriam's Song the *Actual* Exodus? (Parshat Beshalach )

Which came first: The Exodus story or the Exodus poem? I try and fail to figure it out

moses parts the red sea

Week 16: Exodus 13:17 - 17:16

• Haftarah Portion: Judges 4:4 - 5:31

• Summary: The Israelites' journey through the wilderness, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the miracle of manna are recounted. The Haftarah celebrates the victory of Deborah and Barak over the Canaanites, highlighting the importance of trust in God during times of crisis.

• Thematic Connection: Trust and Deliverance

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By Rabbi Patrick Beaulier

What came first: poetry or prose?
Songs or stories?
Ballads or bulletins?
And does it matter?

I think yes.

Bible scholars like Richard Elliott Friedman, Robert Altar and David Freedman have, through their vast collections of biblical commentary, pointed out that humanity wrote poetry long before prose.

That, and accounting. But that’s another story.

A few examples of early poetic expressions include the Epic of Gilgamesh from Mesopotamia, the Rigveda from ancient India, and the Homeric epics (Iliad and Odyssey) from ancient Greece.  And for our purposes, Exodus 15, The Song of the Sea.

Rita Dove has said, “Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.” Or perhaps for our purposes, poetry is language in its earliest and therefore most concentrated form.

In other words, the first thing we do as humans, with the new technology of communication in our tool belt, is develop poetic storytelling. If poetry “works” not because there are MORE words at your disposal, but fewer, then it makes sense that early humanity would have used poems before prose.

We have a sense that the poetry of the bible comes before the narrative. The Song of the Sea and the Song of Deborah being the two likely winners of the oldest-parts-of-the-Bible contest.

Here’s where it starts to get interesting.

It’s a common practice in the Bible to finish a stretch of narrative with a poem. And both Song of the Sea and Deborah are examples of this phenomenon. But that leads readers to believe that the Bible is reporting something that happened, then summarizing it with a rousing song…that the authors recorded history, then created a Disney montage ending to cap it all off.

If, however, Biblical poetry came first, then perhaps the narrative is the latter. What if the story is not the source material for the poem, but what if the poem is the source material for the story.

What came first: the Song of the Sea, or The Exodus?

It’s like the Bible’s very own chicken and egg game.