Biblica_1:Layout 1 21-11-2011 12:59 Pagina 335 335 EISODUS AS EXODUS: THE SONG OF THE SEA Though somewhat more abstracted from historical context, this bears close similarity to the images within Judg 5 regarding the equa- tion of Canaanite charioteers with the menace of Egyptian hege- mony 55. Like Judg 5,2-5, YHWH’s warrior traits are contrasted against the threat of Egypt, but here the typology is extended: the smaller culture (Canaan) is fully subsumed within the larger (Egypt), and YHWH confronts the enemy directly. The poet continues to ab- stract the pseudo-mythic imagery of Judg 5 through the transforma- tion of the Kishon river (Judg 5,21) into the primordial Sea (My), invoking the traditional enemy of the Canaanite divine warrior drama, Sea/Yamm 56. But despite the full engagement of mythic lan- guage and typologies, Exod 15 maintains distinctions between Is- raelite and Canaanite usages of these tropes. The poet invokes the term My as an alloform of the primordial waters of chaos that appear later in the poem (tmht in v. 5), but in Canaanite myth, the divine warrior does battle against these watery entities. In Exod 15, the enemy in question is not Sea/Yamm, but Egypt 57. Indeed, the poet reinforces this distinction through the repetition of this pivotal mo- ment several times between vv. 4-10: the captains of Egypt are drowned in the Sea (v. 4) 58, the deep covers the enemy and they sink beneath it (v. 5), and even when the rhetoric of battle against the Sea appears to surface (My blb tmht w)pq…Mym wmr(n Kyp) in v. 8), it is ultimately revealed to be a prelude to My functioning as an instru- ment of YHWH’s might against the true enemy (My wmsk Kxwrb in v. 10) 59. 55 LEUCHTER, “Canaanite Chariots”, 267-268. 56 C. KLOOS, Yhwh’s Combat with the Sea. A Canaanite Tradition in An- cient Israelite Religion (Leiden 1986) 127-157. 57 See the related discussion by KLOOS, Yhwh’s Combat, 142-145; CROSS, CMHE, 131-132. 58 The full phrase Pws Myb seems to tie the event to a specific location (the Sea of Reeds) in a manner similar to the reference to the Kishon in Judg 5,21. B.F. BATTO, “The Reed Sea: Requiescat in Pace”, JBL 102 (1983) 27- 35, suggests repointing the text to read PwIOs Myb, i.e., “the final sea”. However, if the poem is establishing an Egyptian typology for Canaanite enemies, then an association with an Egyptian border locale such as the Sea of Reeds is consistent with the poem’s mythopoeic thrust; see S.C. RUSSELL, Images of Egypt, 130, n. 19. 59 Compare the repetitions in vv. 4-5 to those involving Yael’s dispatching of Sisera in Judg 5,24-27. The rhetorical function of extending the event is substantially the same, and for similar purposes, i.e., associating a particular