"... 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