“The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father's God, and I will exalt him.”
My Notes
What Does Exodus 15:2 Mean?
Exodus 15:2 is from the Song of Moses — Israel's spontaneous worship after crossing the Red Sea. "The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation." The Hebrew zimrath — song — suggests not just a tune but a melody that defines you. God isn't just the subject of the song. He is the song.
The phrase "he is become my salvation" — hayah li lishuah — uses the verb "become." God didn't just perform salvation as an external act. He became salvation for them. The deliverance wasn't a gift handed from a distance. It was God Himself entering their situation and being the rescue. Salvation isn't something God gives. It's something God is.
"He is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father's God, and I will exalt him" — two generations appear here. "My God" is the personal experience of the Exodus generation. "My father's God" is the inherited faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses holds both: the God his ancestors worshipped and the God he has now experienced for himself. Faith that is both inherited and personal, both received and owned.
Reflection Questions
- 1.Is your faith primarily inherited (your parents' God) or personally experienced (my God)? What would deepen the personal dimension?
- 2.Can you point to a 'Red Sea moment' — a time when God became personally real to you, not just theologically true?
- 3.Moses says God 'is become' his salvation — not just performed it. What's the difference between God doing something for you and God being something for you?
- 4.When was the last time your experience of God made you want to spontaneously sing? What has dulled that impulse?
Devotional
This song erupts on the far side of the impossible. Israel is standing on dry ground with the sea behind them and Egyptian bodies washing up on the shore. Five minutes ago they were terrified. Now they're singing. And what they sing reveals what deliverance does to your theology: it makes it personal.
"The LORD is my strength" — not strength in general. My strength. "He is become my salvation" — not salvation as a doctrine. My salvation. Something shifted at the Red Sea. God went from being Abraham's God and Isaac's God and Jacob's God to being their God. The inherited faith became experienced faith. That's the difference between knowing about God and knowing God.
"My father's God, and I will exalt him" — Moses doesn't abandon the inherited faith. He builds on it. His father's God is also his God, but now the relationship is his own. That's the healthy pattern: receive the faith of your parents, then make it yours through your own Red Sea moments.
If your faith still feels inherited — something you were handed but haven't fully owned — you might be waiting for your own Red Sea. The moment where God becomes not just the God of your tradition but the God who showed up for you, specifically, in your impossible situation. And when that moment comes, you won't need someone to tell you to sing. You'll sing because you can't help it.
Commentary
Trusted original commentary from respected historical Bible scholars and theologians.
The Lord is my strength and song,..... The strength of Moses and the children of Israel against the fears of the…
With the deliverance of Israel is associated the development of the national poetry, which finds its first and perfect…
The Lord is my strength and song - How judiciously are the members of this sentence arranged! He who has God for his…
Having read how that complete victory of Israel over the Egyptians was obtained, here we are told how it was celebrated;…
Cross References
Related passages throughout Scripture