DID YOU KNOW?
The answer
The song in Exodus 15. "The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone" (Exodus 15:5), and "they sank like lead in the mighty waters" (Exodus 15:10). The story in Exodus 14 tells it another way. There the army is on the dry sea floor when "the waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers" (Exodus 14:28).
Why it’s interesting
Michael Coogan and Cynthia Chapman, in their Old Testament textbook, read the song as a storm at sea, with the Egyptians apparently in ships. An army already on the sea floor could not sink like a stone, they say. The New Oxford Annotated Bible, a study Bible, says the song differs from chapter 14 in many details.
Scholarly consensus
Learn the Bible.
Not just the stories, but the history, authorship, and scholarship behind it.