Exodus Lesson Plan: Poetry

by Mindi Popovich-Schneider

This month we will be looking at the poetry in the book of Exodus. In Chapter 15, both Moses and his sister Miriam sing hymns of praise after God takes them safely across the Red Sea. 

  • Read through Moses’s and Miriam’s hymns. 

    • Make a list of any words you don’t know and look them up in the dictionary. 

    • What do you notice about these songs as you read through them?

    • Do any particular words or phrases stand out to you? 

    • Do you notice any repetition?

    • Do you think they used any musical instruments while singing these songs? How do you think they were able to sing such beautiful songs right on the spot?

  • Where do we find these verses (or “echoes” of them) in the rest of the Bible? For example:

    • Psalm 77:13-14 echoes Moses’s cry: “Who is so great a God as our God? Thou art the God who workest wonders.” This, of course, became one of our Paschal hymns!

    • Revelations 15:3 states that St. John hears the angels sing “the song of the servant of God Moses and of the Lamb.”

  • Where do we find these verses (or similar ideas) in our Liturgy? Some examples:

    • The whole chapter was once chanted as the first of nine Biblical Odes during Orthros, though St. Andrew of Crete initiated the practice of replacing these with shorter verses. The first verses of our canons still retell this story!

    • We hear Mose’s introductory line echoed in the first ode of the service of Paraklesis: “Traversing the water as on dry land / and thereby escaping from the toils of Egypt land / the Israelites cried aloud, proclaiming, “To our God and Redeemer, let us now sing!”

  • Read “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (you may even want to memorize it–it’s fun to recite!). Talk through its meaning. How does it relate to the Israelites’ hymns in Chapter 15 of Exodus? (Hint: Ozymandias is the Greek name for Ramses II.)

Ozymandias

Percy Bysshe Shelley 

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.