Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Polycarp66 AT aol.com]

In a message dated 3/28/2004 10:49:50 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
dwashbur AT nyx.net writes:
On Sunday 28 March 2004 08:39, Dora Smith wrote:
> Were different parts of the Song of the Sea written at different times?
> Its general style is 12th century.  It contains the oldest and most basic
> version of the story of the death of Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea.
>
> Our leader in our bible study class Wednesday said that in those days
> everyone in the Near East, certainly Pharaho's armies, used horsedrawn
> chariots, not rode horses, and that noone rode horses until the 8th
> century. I don't know if this is true.    But I sure would have expected
> Pharaoh's horses to have been mainly pulling chariots - unless the passages
> taht talk about horse and rider actually mean something else or have
> another origin.

Bear in mind that it's also poetry, so the writer of the song could have used 
some poetic license for his/her own reasons, it could very well be that 
"horse and rider" sounded better to the lyricist than "horse and chariot."  
It's a song, not a treatise, so in our analysis we have to treat it as such.
___________

I'm not sure that this is an adequate answer.  If RKB means the one who is 
sitting upon that which is ridden, then certainly even poetic license would 
not 
account for calling a person a "rider" of a horse before horses were 
generally 
used in such fashion.  I would suggest rather that RKB in Ex 15.1 does not 
mean "rider" but rather "chariot."  If we look at Ex 14.6, it states that 
WaY.e):SoR )eT_RiC:B.ow. "and he yoked his chariot."  I would therefore 
suggest that 
we should understand 15.1 in this sense "the horse and its chariot . . ."

gfsomsel