Exodus 15:3
1 Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord. They said, “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously, the horse and its rider he has thrown into the sea. 2 The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. This is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. 3 The Lord is a man of war10— the Lord is his name. 4 The chariots of Pharaoh and his army he has thrown into the sea, and his chosen officers were drowned in the Red Sea. 5 The depths have covered them; they went down to the bottom like a stone.
LXX Exodus 15:3
1 Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song to God, and spoke, saying, Let us sing to the Lord, for he is very greatly glorified: horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. 2 He was to me a helper and protector for salvation: this is my God, and I will glorify him; my father's God, and I will exalt him. 3 The Lord, when he shatters wars, the Lord is his name. 4 He has cast the chariots of Pharao and his host into the sea, the chosen mounted captains: they were swallowed up in the Red Sea. 5 He covered them with the sea: they sank to the depth like a stone.
Notes and References
"... The “Song at the Sea,” contains Moses’ hymn to God, ostensibly sung just after the Egyptians are drowned. As is true of many hymns, the beginning contains multiple praises of YHWH. One such praise, reads differently in all three main extant texts type ... Did one or two of these descriptions develop by way of exegesis from an earlier reading or by way of textual mishap, and if so, which reading is the earliest of the three? Although not /certain, the MT seems the most ancient, reflecting a time when it was still possible to depict YHWH in the highly anthropomorphic image of “a man of war.” Nowhere else in Scripture is God depicted as a “man.” ... The unusual LXX reading, “who shatters wars,” does not fit a context in which YHWH is depicted in the next verses as an active warrior. The appearance of this rendering makes sense when we consider the likely Hebrew reconstruction, י־הוה שׁבר מלחמה. The word (shober) in LXX and (gibbor) in SP differ in only one letter (shin and gimel) in their base form, though admittedly, the two letters are not close graphically. In sum, it seems that we can trace the development of the text as follows: the MT’s “man of war” is the oldest text. It was modified by the pre-SP scribes for theological reasons to read “hero of war.” This text was, in turn, misread by the LXX translator or his Vorlage, who read or wrote שבר instead of גבר, yielding the present text of the LXX ..."
Tov, Emanuel God as a Warrior, Exodus 15:3 (pp. 1-3) Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2023