Praise & Psalmody - Week 1: Thursday

Exodus 15:1

Now Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to God and spoke, saying:“Let us sing to the Lord, for He is greatly glorified. Horse and rider He has thrown into the sea. The Lord became my helper and the shield of my salvation; He is my God, and I will glorify Him; My father’s God, and I will exalt Him.

Origen, Commentary On The Song Of Songs, Prologue 4

As the perfect Bride of the perfect husband, then, she has received the words of perfect doctrine. Moses and the children of Israel sang the first song to God when “they saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore” and when they saw “the strong hand” and the mighty strong arm “of the Lord and [when they] believed in God and Moses his servant.” Then they sang, therefore, saying, “Let us sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously magnified.” And I think that nobody can attain to that perfect and mystical song and to the perfection of the Bride which this Scripture contains unless he first marches “through the midst of the sea upon dry land” and, with “the water becoming to him as a wall on the right hand and on the left,” so makes his escape “from the hands of the Egyptians.” [Then] he “beholds them dead on the seashore” and, seeing the strong hand with which the Lord has acted against the Egyptians, believes in the Lord and in his servant Moses. In Moses, I say—in the law, and in the Gospels and in all the divine Scriptures. For them he will have good cause to sing and say, “Let us sing unto the Lord, for he is gloriously magnified.”