In Psalm 136:15, we find that God “overthrew Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea.” The Hebrew word translated here as “overthrew” is na’ar, also found in Exodus 14:27. It does not mean “to drown” or “to toss or tumble about as in the water” as some have attempted to assert. It simply means “shook off” as is mentioned in the margins of many Bibles and in the Brown, Driver & Briggs Hebrew Lexicon. (Nehemiah 5:13 illustrates how na’ar should be translated: “Then I shook out the fold of my garment. . . .”) Therefore, these verses simply say that God shook off the Egyptians, including Pharaoh, from their pursuit of the Israelites. These scriptures say nothing of who was drowned.
