Exodus 15, the Song at the Sea, appears to be triggered by the
divine victory over the Egyptians at the Sea, but the poet draws on other
literary images of destruction, images that are incompatible, in order to
express exuberance over divine victory. This seemingly rudimentary technique
is adroitly deployed in tandem with strategies of historical shaping
and poetics. Time is retarded and accelerated, events and characters are
omitted or transformed, and perspective and emphasis are shifted. Reality
contemporary to the poet is mirrored in the distant past. Poetic strategies
of endstopping, varying line length, and staircase parallelism work in
tandem to heighten emotional intensity.