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God Stopped the Angels From Singing Until Israel Had Sung First

When the sea closed over Egypt the angels gathered to sing. God stopped them all. His children had earned the right to sing first.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Angels Assembled to Sing
  2. The Parable of the Son and the Servant
  3. Moses and the Multitude
  4. Why the Order Mattered

The Angels Assembled to Sing

The sea closed. The Egyptian army was at the bottom of it. Israel stood on the far shore, wet and alive, looking back at the water that had held itself up long enough for every one of them to cross and then collapsed on everything pursuing them. The sound of horses and chariot wheels stopped. The sound of six hundred thousand people breathing in silence started.

In heaven, the angels assembled to sing. This was not unusual. The angels sing constantly, arranged in their orders before the divine throne, praising God in cycles that never stop. But the moment felt different. Something of enormous significance had just happened, and the celestial host understood its weight and was ready to mark it with song.

God stopped them.

The Parable of the Son and the Servant

Not permanently. Not because the angels' praise was unwelcome. But because there was an order to what was about to happen, and the angels were not first in it. God said: Let My children sing first.

He offered an explanation in the form of a parable. A king returns from war victorious. At the gate of his palace, two people are waiting: his son and his servant. Both of them are holding garlands to place on his head. Both want to crown him. The king approaches, and instead of accepting the servant's garland first, he stops and says: My son crowns me first. Not because the servant's loyalty is worthless. Not to demean the servant or signal displeasure with his service. But because the relationship with his son is categorically different, made of something no servant relationship can replicate, and that difference should be visible in who places the first garland.

Israel was the son. The angels were the servants. The Song at the Sea would be sung by Israel first, and then the angels could add their voices.

Moses and the Multitude

On the shore, Moses began to sing. The tradition describes him opening the song and the people completing each verse as though they had rehearsed it, the words rising from six hundred thousand throats in response to his leading phrase, the spirit of God that had filled them all at the crossing transmitting the song from one end of the crowd to the other without rehearsal or delay. Moses weighed as much as all of Israel together in the reckoning of the song: his contribution was counted equal to the contribution of every other Israelite combined, not as a statement about his authority but as a description of how the song's mechanics worked.

The word the song opens with, az, is unusual. It is a future tense form that the rabbis read as a signal that this was not merely a song about what had just happened. It was a song that pointed forward, that would be sung again, that the tradition says will echo at the final redemption. The Song at the Sea was the first singing of something that would have a last singing, and the people standing on the shore at the first singing did not know they were at the beginning of a very long composition.

Why the Order Mattered

The tradition cares about who sang first because it cares about what the order signals. The angels are the servants of the cosmic order, and their singing before Israel would imply that Israel's standing before God was in the servant category. The parable makes the correction visible. Israel's relationship with God was a covenant, made with Abraham and renewed at Sinai, of a different kind than the obedience relationship the angels inhabited. They served out of nature. Israel chose out of history. The choice was honored by being allowed to sing first, before the servile voices of the celestial court added their obligatory praise.

AngelsExodusRed SeaMusicCovenantAbrahamDivine Love
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From the tradition

Sources

4 sources

The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Legends of the Jews 1:63Legends of the Jews

Behind them? Pharaoh's army, breathing down their necks. Ahead? What seems like an insurmountable wall of water. It’s a moment of absolute crisis.

The angels, ever-dutiful, decide it's time for their daily hymn of praise. But God, in his infinite wisdom and compassion, tells them to hold their celestial horses! "Forbear!" He commands, according to Legends of the Jews. "My children are in distress, and you would sing!"

This wasn’t the first time the angels had to take a back seat to the Israelites, as Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews recounts. But what happens next is even more astonishing.

After the men sang their praises (likely the Shirat HaYam, the Song of the Sea), the women of Israel stepped forward. And they sang. Only then, after the men and the women, were the angels finally given their turn.

Can you just picture the heavenly host, tapping their feet, wings rustling impatiently? They started to murmur, according to the legend. "Is it not enough that the men have preceded us? Shall the women come before us also?"

Their complaint is understandable. They are, after all, angels! But God’s response is utterly definitive. “As surely as ye live, so it is," He declares. The order is set.

So what does this tell us? Why this seemingly minor detail in the grand narrative of the Exodus?

Perhaps it's a reminder that even in the most spiritual realms, humility and empathy are paramount. That even beings of pure light and divine purpose sometimes need to step aside and recognize the value and the voice of others, especially those who are suffering. It also highlights the importance and spiritual power of women in Judaism. Their song, their praise, was so vital it took precedence even over the angels.: when have you had to take a backseat? When have you had to recognize the importance of someone else's voice, someone else's experience? And what did you learn from it? Maybe, just maybe, there's a little bit of angelic murmuring in all of us. And maybe, just maybe, we all need that divine reminder to listen, to empathize, and to let others sing.

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Legends of the Jews 3:11-13Legends of the Jews

The familiar story is this: Moses, the parting of the waters, a miraculous escape. But what if there was someone else there, seeing even more than meets the eye?

That someone was Serah bat Asher.

The story goes that when Serah stood with the children of Israel at the edge of the Yam Suf, the Sea of Reeds (what readers often call the Red Sea), she experienced a vision unlike any other. While everyone else saw the parted waters, Serah saw… well, everything.

The tradition says Serah saw the countless angels who had gathered to witness this incredible event. Imagine, a heavenly host cheering on the Israelites! But it didn't stop there. She also saw the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence itself, descending among them as Miriam, Moses' sister, led the women in joyous song and dance, playing her tambourine and singing the "Song of the Sea." Can you picture it? The energy, the relief, the sheer awe of that moment?

But the most extraordinary part of Serah's vision? She saw God. She saw the Holy One, blessed be He, commanding the waters to part. Now, that's a powerful image. The story emphasizes that, besides Moses, Serah was uniquely qualified to witness this. She was the only other person alive at that moment who could gaze upon the face of God and live.

This brings up an interesting point: what did the Israelites see at the Red Sea? There are different perspectives in our tradition. Some say that even a simple maidservant witnessed things at the sea that even the greatest prophets, like Isaiah and Ezekiel, never experienced. As it says in the Book of Ezekiel (1:1), "The heavens were opened and I saw visions of God." The implication is that the collective experience at the Red Sea was so potent, so filled with divine revelation, that it surpassed even the visions granted to the prophets.

However, there's also a tradition that paints a different picture of Serah's status. The Pesikta de-Rav Kahana recounts that when the Israelites first came down into Egypt, Serah was enslaved and forced into hard labor, grinding grain at a mill. This raises a question: How could someone who was enslaved and subjected to such harsh conditions possess such a profound spiritual vision?

Perhaps the answer lies in the idea that divinity can be found in the most unexpected places and in the most unlikely people. Maybe it was Serah's humility, her resilience in the face of adversity, that allowed her to see beyond the physical and into the spiritual realm. Or maybe it was simply her inherent connection to the divine, regardless of her social standing. The Zohar, a central text of Kabbalah, often emphasizes that everyone has a spark of the divine within them, waiting to be ignited.

Whatever the reason, Serah bat Asher's vision at the Red Sea serves as a powerful reminder that miracles aren't just about grand, sweeping events. They're also about the individual moments of revelation, the personal connections to the divine that can transform our understanding of the world. And sometimes, the most profound visions are granted to those who are often overlooked.

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Legends of the Jews 1:64Legends of the Jews

The story of that moment, of the shirah, the song, is richer than you might imagine. It wasn't just a spontaneous outburst. According to Legends of the Jews, when it came time to sing praises to God, the Israelites first wanted Moses, their leader, to lead the song.

Moses, in a surprising act of humility, declined. "No," he said, "you shall begin it. It is a greater honor to be praised by the multitude than by a single one." He understood the power of collective gratitude, the strength in a chorus of voices lifted in praise.

So, what did they sing? It wasn't just "We thank you for saving us." Oh no, it was a deep, personal, and vividly detailed recounting of God's interventions from the very beginning.

"We will glorify the Eternal," they sang, "for He has shown us signs and tokens." They recalled the horrific decree of the Egyptians, "Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river!" But then, they remembered the miracles, almost forgotten in the rush to freedom.

Their mothers, forced into the fields, were granted painless births. The angels themselves descended, washing and anointing the newborns, dressing them in shimmering, multi-colored silk. Can you picture that? Angels, cradling these tiny children, preparing them for a future only God could see.

And the gifts! Each child received two lumps, one of butter and one of honey. A taste of sweetness, a promise of abundance, even in the face of despair.

When the mothers awoke and saw their children – clean, clothed, blessed – they didn't panic. They praised God. "Praise be God who has not turned His grace and His lasting love from the seed of our father Abraham; and now behold! they are in Thy hand, do with them as Thou wilt." A powerful affirmation of faith, a surrender to divine will.

And the miracles didn’t stop there. When the Egyptians sought to kill the children, the earth swallowed them up, hiding them in secret places. As Ginzberg retells it, God "didst bid the earth swallow us and set us in another place, where we were not seen by the Egyptians."

Later, when they grew up, they wandered through Egypt, eventually finding their families. "All this hast Thou done for us," they sang, "therefore will we sing of Thee."

The shirah wasn't just about the Red Sea. It was about remembering, about connecting the dots between hardship and divine intervention, about seeing God's hand in every step of their journey. It was a song of collective memory, a evidence of faith passed down through generations.

What about us? What "songs" do we sing? What stories do we tell ourselves, to make sense of our own journeys, our own moments of hardship and deliverance? Perhaps, like the Israelites, we need to remember the small miracles, the quiet acts of grace that often go unnoticed. Perhaps, our own shirah is waiting to be sung.

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Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Beshalach 12:1Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Beshalach

Another interpretation of (Exodus 15:1): "Then (az) Moses sang." This is what Scripture says (Psalms 40:2): "I waited eagerly for the LORD," and so forth. Rabbi Pinhas the Priest bar Hama said: If you have waited and He has not come, wait again. David said (Psalms 27:14): "Hope in the LORD; be strong and let your heart take courage, and hope in the LORD." If your hope has come, well and good; if not, hope in the LORD again. And David said: "I waited eagerly for the LORD." Out of the waiting, (Psalms 40:2): "He inclined to me and heard my cry." (Exodus 2:24): "And God heard their groaning," and so forth. (Psalms 40:3): "He brought me up out of the roaring pit, out of the miry clay," and so forth, out of the clay of the bricks. (Psalms 40:3): "And He set my feet upon a rock", in that He gave me the spoil of Egypt and the spoil of the sea. (He made my steps firm.) (Psalms 40:4): "And He put a new song in my mouth", "Then Moses sang," and so forth. What is "Then" (az)? With "az" the Holy One, blessed be He, made the dry land into sea for the generation of Enosh, as it is said (Genesis 4:26): "Then (az) it was begun to call upon the name of the LORD." But for us He made the sea into dry land; with "az" we praise Him.

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