Yah, and a word no two versions render alike

Yah — “Jehovah” is spelled out in full everywhere else in this translation, but here the Hebrew itself uses the short poetic form, YAH (oz-zi ve-zimrat YAH, “my strength and song is Yah”) — the form behind HALLELU-YAH. This is its first appearance anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. Two later poets quote this exact phrase back: Isaiah 12:2 and Psalm 118:14 both open “Yah is my strength and song,” word for word.

“Glorify” renders a genuinely disputed verb, ve-anvehu. KJV stands alone on this shelf with something else entirely — “I will PREPARE HIM AN HABITATION” — reading the root as related to naveh, a dwelling-place. ASV, NIV and ESV all read “I will praise him” instead, from a root meaning beautiful or fitting — the same root Jewish tradition later built into hiddur mitzvah, the principle of performing a commandment as beautifully as possible. RV60 follows the praise reading (“lo alabaré”); this translation renders it “glorify,” sitting between the two.

A man of war

No softening in the Hebrew: ish milchamah, a MAN of war, is one of the most directly martial images of God anywhere in the Bible — not a general or a metaphor held at arm's length, but the plain noun for an ordinary soldier. NIV alone on this shelf trades the noun for “warrior”; every other version here keeps “man of war” as flatly as the Hebrew does.

Nostrils and anger are the same word

Appekha, “your nostrils,” is built on aph — the ordinary Hebrew word for a NOSE, and also the ordinary word for ANGER, because flared nostrils were the physical picture behind the emotion. The wind that piles up the sea is called God's own breath, snorted out. NVI keeps the image bluntly literal — “un soplo de tu nariz” (a puff of your nose) — where most English versions smooth “nostrils” into an abstraction like “blast.”

Who is like you among the gods

Ba-elim, “among the gods,” is rendered plainly on every version checked here — KJV, ASV, NIV, ESV and RV60 all print “gods,” not a softened “mighty ones.” The line does not deny other gods exist; it insists Jehovah has no rival among them. Under its Hebrew opening words this verse is known as Mi Chamocha, “Who is like You,” and it has stayed in continuous liturgical use for millennia: recited daily in the Jewish morning service, and sung in Catholic tradition at the Easter Vigil, under the title “Song of Moses.”

Miriam, who is also Mary

Miriam's name in Hebrew is Miryam — the identical name the New Testament carries into Greek and then English as MARY. English keeps them looking like two different names; RV60 does not — it calls Moses's sister “María,” the same name Spanish gives to Jesus's mother. NVI instead transliterates, “Miriam,” matching the choice made here.

She is the first person in the Bible called a PROPHETESS, and her two-line reply in v21 is nearly identical to v1's opening — ancient song titles often doubled as their first line, which has led some scholars (notably Frank Moore Cross and David Noel Freedman) to argue Miriam's couplet is the older, original core, later expanded into the eighteen-verse song and reassigned to Moses rather than the other way around. A fragment among the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q365) preserves yet another, longer version of a song credited to her. Neither claim can be proven; both are reported.

Marah, named for what happened there

The text supplies its own etymology: the water was marim, BITTER, so the place was named Marah, Bitterness — a naming pattern this book will use repeatedly for places that remember an event rather than a geography.

The LORD your healer

“I am Jehovah, your healer” (rofekha) is the first time in the Bible God takes this as a self-description — not merely an act he performs but a name he claims, the root behind the later devotional title “Jehovah-Rapha.” It arrives paired with plain water: a bitter spring, a tree, and a promise that comes with no ritual attached, only listening.

Twelve springs, seventy palms

Elim's tally — twelve springs, seventy palm trees — lands on two numbers this book keeps returning to: twelve tribes, seventy elders (24:1) and seventy who go down into Egypt (1:5). Whether the count is meant to be read that way or is simply what was there, the text does not say; it is left as a detail, not an argument.