The Song at the Sea asks: "Who is like You among the mighty, O Lord?" (Exodus 15:11). The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael reads this question not as rhetorical flattery but as a genuine theological claim, grounded in specific evidence.
Who is like God? No one — and the proof is what happened at the Red Sea. The miracles and wonders that God performed there were unlike anything any power, human or celestial, could replicate. The Mekhilta points to (Psalms 106:22) as confirmation: God performed "awesome deeds upon the Red Sea." The word "awesome" — nora'ot — means deeds that inspire terror and reverence simultaneously.
The Mekhilta then cites a second verse from the same psalm: "He roared at the Red Sea and it dried up" (Psalms 106:9). The image is breathtaking. God did not mechanically part the waters. He roared. Like a lion, like a voice of overwhelming power, God shouted at the sea and it recoiled. The water did not merely recede — it dried up entirely, as though the sea itself was terrified into obedience.
The combination of these two verses creates a portrait of divine power that answers the Song's question definitively. Who is like God? The one who performs deeds so awesome they redefine the word. The one who speaks and the ocean obeys. The one whose roar turns water into dry ground. The miracles at the Red Sea are not just historical events in this reading — they are the permanent, unanswerable proof that no power in existence compares to the God of Israel.