Biblica_1:Layout 1 21-11-2011 12:59 Pagina 346 346 MARK LEUCHTER safe within its boundaries. Those who could maintain the integrity of those boundaries and the social order within them would thus naturally hold cultic authority and be perceived as the agents of the deity who empowered Israel into existence. Such figures in- variably stand behind the poem in its current form and are likely responsible for promulgating it within Israel’s evolving cult as the atomism of individual kinship groups gave way to a greater sense of inter-lineage accountability and affiliation. Department of Religion Mark LEUCHTER Temple University Philadelphia, USA 19122 SUMMARY This study continues a line of inquiry from the author’s previous essay regarding the 12th century BCE battle traditions embedded in the Song of Deborah (Judg 5) as the basis for a nascent Exodus ideology surfacing in the Song of the Sea (Exod 15). Exod 15 is identified as developing an agrarian ideal into a basis for national identity: Israel’s successful strug- gles against competing Canaanite military forces echoing earlier Egypt- ian imperial hegemony is liturgized into a myth where YHWH defeats the Egyptian foe and then settles his own sacred agrarian estate.