The Cambridge Old English Reader

The story told in Exodus, the second poem of the Junius manuscript (see p. 166), is at the heart of Jewish history, for it tells of the very survival of the race. The biblical version of the events covered in the poem is given very concisely in Ex 13.20–14.31. After a long captivity in Egypt, the Israelites have finally been allowed by Pharaoh to leave and are led away by Moses. But Pharaoh changes his mind and gives chase until he corners the fugitives at the Red Sea, whereupon Moses, at God's command, causes the waters to part so that the Israelites can pass safely across. When Pharaoh and his troops try to follow, the water returns and they are all drowned.

The extract given here comes from the dramatic climax of the poem. The terrified Egyptians have tried to follow the Israelites, only to find the sea overwhelming them. With impressive verbal virtuosity, the poet presents their destruction in a repetitive pattern of visual images of almost cinematographic intensity – using fourfold variation, for instance, to tell how the walls of water have come crashing down on the doomed army. There is an apocalyptic tone to all this, a clear allusion to the terrors of Judgement Day for the unrighteous. God's adversary, the poet declares, has found that God is greater than he is; the pride of the Egyptians has been smashed and such is the completeness of their annihilation that there is not even a messenger left to take the news of defeat back home.

After the action, Moses spells out to the Israelites the nature of God's covenant with them (lines 108–18), but first there is a homiletic digression apparently by the poet himself, who is clearly well versed in biblical exegesis (lines 77–102). He exhorts his audience to be open to the lessons of scripture, to recognise the ephemeral nature of life on earth, and to prepare for Judgement Day. Deliverance from this exile on earth will be the reward of the righteous.

Syntactically, Exodus presents the modern reader with special challenges. It is not always clear, for instance, whether certain half-lines complement the previous half-line (or even the one before that) or anticipate the next, and the interpretations and punctuation given below are necessarily subjective.