Targum Pseudo-Jonathan does not translate the Song of the Sea so much as it paints it. Where the Hebrew speaks of majesty, the Targum speaks of walls. Where the Hebrew says fire, the Targum shows us stubble.
The verse reads: And in the plenitude and greatness of Thy majesty Thou hast destroyed the walls of the enemies of Thy people. Thou wilt pour upon them Thy fierce anger, Thou wilt consume them as the burning fire prevails over the stubble.
Walls. That is the Targum's first surprise. Pharaoh's chariots were not simply men and horses, the paraphrast insists. They were walls, fortifications, the whole architecture of tyranny. When God struck them, He was not merely defeating soldiers. He was pulling down a civilization that had built itself on the backs of slaves.
Then the image shifts to fire and stubble. Stubble is what remains after the harvest: dry stalks, worthless for bread, ready to be burned before the next planting. The Targum is saying that Egypt's power, which had looked so solid, was in truth already spent. The plagues had harvested what was alive. What went into the sea was already stubble.
The Maggid pauses here. He wants you to hear the pacing. A fire prevails over stubble quickly, almost silently. There is no long battle. The tyranny that had held Israel for generations ended in the time it takes a flame to cross a dry field.
That is the Targum's quiet promise to every reader in every generation: what looks like a wall may already be stubble. The <a href='/categories/midrash-aggadah.html'>aggadic tradition</a> returns to this image again and again.