Exodus 15:5

Hebrew Bible

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. 6 Your right hand, O Lord, was majestic in power; your right hand, O Lord, shattered the enemy. 7 In the abundance of your majesty you have overthrown those who rise up against you. You sent forth your wrath; it consumed them like stubble.

Jonah 2:6

Hebrew Bible

4 I thought I had been banished from your sight and that I would never again see your holy temple. 5 Water engulfed me up to my neck; the deep ocean surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. 6 I went down to the very bottoms of the mountains; the gates of the netherworld barred me in forever, but you brought me up from the Pit, O Lord, my God. 7 When my life was ebbing away, I called out to the Lord. And my prayer came to you, to your holy temple. 8 Those who worship worthless idols forfeit the mercy that could be theirs.

 Notes and References

"... Batto, however, does not say that יםסוף is only geographical and, building on the suggestion of Norman H. Snaith, argues that יםסוף simultaneously refers to the cosmographical Sea at the End. Snaith proposes that יםסוף “means that distant scarcely known sea away to the south, of which no man knew the boundary ... the sea at the end of the land.” To support this hypothesis, he points to the terms to which יםסוף stands in parallel in Exodus 15:4–5: sea (ים), deeps (תהמת), and depths (מצולת), and notes, “In verse 5 with references to the Deeps and the depths we have passed into the realm of the great Creation-myth, that story of the fight against the monster of Chaos which is interwoven with the story of God’s rescue of the people from bondage both in Egypt and in Babylon ... This is the depths of the primeval ocean, of Tiamat the great sea monster.” Batto builds on Snaith’s observations and argues that “sûp is attested in the Hebrew Bible in the precise [mythological] meaning required by Snaith’s thesis.” He finds this meaning in Jonah 2:4,6 ... Batto argues that the usual translation of סוף as reeds or some kind of plant in Jonah 2:6 is “demonstrably wrong” and that “the context requires sûp to have something to do with a cosmic battle against chaos.” “Given the context of images of non-existence and in parallelism with mythic waters and the Abyss, here sûp (or sôp) must be derived from the Semitic root sûp, ‘to come to an end,’ ‘to cease (to exist).’” If Batto is correct, then יםסוף in Exodus 15:4b may be translated as “the Sea at the End” ..."

Cho, Paul K. K. Myth, History, and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible (pp. 113-114) Cambridge University Press, 2018

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