Exodus 15 · a question people ask
"Who is like you, LORD, among the gods?" Who are the gods?
The song asks, "Who is like you, LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?" (15:11). Exodus has already said, "I will execute judgments against all the gods of Egypt" (12:12). Jethro will say, "Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods" (18:11), and at Sinai the LORD will say, "You shall have no other gods before me" (20:3). Christians who share the same beliefs read "the gods" in two main ways. Both agree on the song's point: no one is like the LORD (15:11; 8:10; 9:14).
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
Idols that are nothing
Those who hold this view point to "all the gods of the peoples are idols, but the LORD made the heavens" (Psalm 96:5), and to Paul: "we know that no idol is anything in the world, and that there is no other God but one" (1 Corinthians 8:4). They read the song as setting the LORD beside what the nations worshipped, which had no power at all.
Psalm 96:5 · 1 Corinthians 8:4-6
Real spiritual powers, far below the LORD
Those who hold this view point to Moses' later song, where Israel "sacrificed to demons, not God, to gods that they didn’t know" (Deuteronomy 32:17), and to Paul, who asks whether "an idol is anything" (1 Corinthians 10:19) and answers that "the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God" (1 Corinthians 10:20). They read the song as comparing the LORD with real powers behind the nations' gods, over whom he is "God of gods and Lord of lords" (Deuteronomy 10:17).
Deuteronomy 32:17 · 1 Corinthians 10:19-20 · Deuteronomy 10:17
The verses
“Who is like you, LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?”
“For I will go through the land of Egypt in that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and animal. I will execute judgments against all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD.”
“Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods because of the way that they treated people arrogantly.””
““You shall have no other gods before me.”