After the Israelites crossed the Red Sea and watched the waters crash over the Egyptian army, they burst into song. But how exactly did they sing? The Torah says (Exodus 15:1) "And they said, saying"—a seemingly redundant phrase. Rabbi Nechemiah found in this repetition a clue to something extraordinary.
Rabbi Nechemiah taught that the Holy Spirit—the Ruach (spirit) HaKodesh—descended and rested upon every single Israelite standing at the shore. In that moment of divine inspiration, the entire nation sang in perfect unison, not because they had rehearsed, but because the Spirit moved through them all simultaneously. They intoned the song "as one reciting the Shema"—meaning that one voice would begin a line and the others would continue it seamlessly, the way the congregation recites the Shema Yisrael in responsive prayer.
This was no ordinary moment of collective singing. The Mekhilta is describing a one-time event in which an entire nation—men, women, children, the elderly, even nursing infants according to some traditions—achieved prophetic inspiration at the same instant. The phrase "and they said, saying" signals that double quality: they said it in the present moment, and they were saying it as an eternal declaration, under divine compulsion.
Other rabbis in the Mekhilta offer alternative models for how the song was performed. Some say Moses would chant a line and the people would repeat it, like a teacher and students. But Rabbi Nechemiah's version is the most radical: the Holy Spirit erased the gap between leader and people entirely. At the sea, there was no distinction between prophet and layperson. Every Israelite became, for that one shining moment, a vessel for the voice of God.