The Mekhilta offers an alternate reading of the Song at the Sea's phrase "You have inclined Your right hand." When God stretches out His hand, the wicked vanish from the world entirely. This is not a gentle warning or a measured punishment. It is total erasure.
The proof comes from the prophets. Tzephaniah declares (Zephaniah 2:13): "And He will stretch out His hand to the north, and Ashur will go lost." The once-mighty Assyrian empire, which had terrorized nations for centuries, would simply disappear at the extension of God's arm. Ezekiel delivers the same message regarding the Philistines (Ezekiel 25:15): "Behold, I will stretch out My hand against the Philistines." The pattern is unmistakable.
The rabbis noticed something extraordinary in the Hebrew phrasing. The verse does not say God "strikes" or "smites" with His hand. He merely inclines it. The smallest gesture from the Creator is enough to unmake entire civilizations. Ashur and the Philistines — two of the ancient world's most feared powers — required nothing more than a tilt of the divine hand to be swept from history.
This midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) transforms a single poetic line from the Song at the Sea into a meditation on the terrifying asymmetry between divine power and human empires. What takes armies and generations to build, God can undo with the slightest movement of His right hand.