Éxodo 14:21-25

PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA(THEY CROSS OVER)

"And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and Jehovah caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left. And the Egyptians pursued, and went in after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. And it came to pass in the morning watch, that Jehovah looked forth upon the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and discomfited the host of the Egyptians. And he took off their chariot wheels, and they drove them heavily; so that the Egyptians said, Let us flee from the face of Israel; for Jehovah fighteth for them against the Egyptians."

Now, there are all kinds of rationalistic "explanations" about how the returning waters turned the dry ground into quicksand or mud, but, to us, such aids of our understanding are in the class with those arguments about how Lazarus had been embalmed, whether by the Egyptian or some other method, all such speculations being for the purpose of helping the Lord Jesus Christ get Lazarus out of the tomb, when he called, "Lazarus, Come forth!" It seems never to occur to such "explainers," that what they are trying to do is help the Lord get a man out of the grave after he had just raised him from the dead! It is absolutely immaterial how God defeated the Egyptians; the fact remains that he did so; and that not a one of them escaped death by drowning in an area "in the midst of the sea," which only shortly before had been dry ground!

"Let us glee ..." Alas, when it was too late, they decided to cease their struggle against the will of God.

"A strong east wind ..." See the chapter introduction (above) for the note on God's use of natural forces in the achievement of the great wonder here. To us, it seems certain that whatever natural forces were brought into the event here, it still remains an unqualified miracle of the greatest magnitude. Of course, God used natural means, as in practically all, if not all, of the great wonders seen in the plagues, and, therefore, it should have been expected that the great forces of nature, eternally under God's control, would have been deployed by Him in the achievement of His will here.

"It went before the camp ... and there was darkness and blackness ..." This is the Septuagint (LXX) rendition of Exodus 14:20, followed also by the RSV, and if this is correct, it would mean that the ordinary darkness of the night was accompanied by and intensified by an even greater darkness emanating from the cloud. The effect was to make it impossible for the Egyptians to know what was going on until daybreak.

"The sea returned to its strength ..." (Exodus 14:27) This means that it returned to its usual depth. In the light of this, what becomes of the "Reed Sea" or "swampland" speculations? This text says that, at the place where Israel crossed and all the Egyptians drowned, "The sea-bed was always covered with strong waters."[18]

"The waters were a wall unto them ..." Misunderstanding this metaphor has resulted in all kinds of bizarre statements about perpendicular "walls of water," but nothing like that is here. "The metaphor is no more to be taken literally than when Ezra 9:9 says that God has given him a wall (same word) in Israel."[19] The meaning is that both the left and right flanks of Israel were protected by the waters. It was only a passageway that God cleared. The "heaps" of waters, right and left, were of the same character of the "heap" of waters at high tides or in front of a hurricane. Throughout this narrative we have been repeatedly reminded of the great natural wonder in the Bay of Fundy, where some of the highest tides on earth occur. In one hour ships may be seen, mighty freighters unloading or loading at the docks along the shore, and after the tide goes out, the same ships may be seen resting upon their keels in the soft sea-bed thirty feet below the level only a few hours previously, and the area covered by this phenomenon is thousands of square miles! What occurs there regularly and naturally is similar to what occurred here supernaturally!