1. The fact of the passage of the Red Sea can be questioned only by an extreme and baseless scepticism. On the principal facts involved-the successful passage of the Israelites, the destruction of the pursuing Egyptians in the returning waters, the principal narratives, and also the Song-all agree; they differ only in details. Dillmann remarks that these details are described most simply if only we do not understand as prose what is intended to be poetry in the Song: a strong wind drives back the waters in such a way as to permit the Israelites to pass through (Exo_15:8); another wind, suddenly rising in an opposite direction (Exo_15:10), causes the water to return and close upon the pursuing foe. That natural causes were in operation is taken for granted: Jehovah is glorified for setting them in action, and achieving by such simple means the salvation of His own people, and the destruction of their foes. The marvel lay in the deliverance of the people, whom its leader had ever taught to trust in its God, in the extremity of danger, without its own co-operation (cf. Exo_14:13; Exo_14:31); this was also the reason why the event had such immense significance in the subsequent history of the people.
It may appear to some that the miracle of the passage of the Red Sea is after all due to an attempt to express in sober prose the language of an ode of triumph, but it is by no means impossible that the path for the Israelites was made by the wind which drove back the shallow water of the lakes, to the north of the Gulf of Suez. Similar occurrences have been recorded, and are accepted as historically true, and it is noticeable that the early account attributes the safety of Israel, and the destruction of the Egyptian army, to Jehovah's use of the violence of the wind for His own purposes. It seems probable that the Israelites turned upon their pursuers, when their chariot wheels were clogged in the moistening sand, and drove them back to meet the returning waters. In this case the passage of the Red Sea would rank among the so-called decisive battles of the world. Never did a greater issue hang upon the strife of armies than when Israel drove Pharaoh's army into the waves. The future of the human race depended on whether the fugitive Hebrews could escape on that day from the house of bondage or not. Well may Psalmist and Prophet celebrate the victory of Jehovah's people, when “God brought them forth out of Egypt.” Well may the Christian teacher compare the passage of the Red Sea to the Sacrament of Baptism, whereby men are brought out of the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God (1Co_10:1-2).1 [Note: F. J. Foakes-Jackson, The Biblical History of the Hebrews, 56.]
We can see here a frequent characteristic of the miraculous element in Scripture, namely, its reaching its end not by a leap, but by a process. Once admit miracle, and it appears as if adaptation of means to ends was unnecessary. It would have been as easy to have transported the Israelites bodily and instantaneously to the other side of the sea, as to have taken these precautions and then cleft the ocean and made them march through it. Legendary miracle would have preferred the former way. The Bible miracle usually adapts methods to aims, and is content to travel to its goal step by step.2 [Note: A. Maclaren.]
The actual point at which the passage of the Red Sea took place can be fixed only by conjecture; for the site suggested for Pi-hahiroth is too conjectural, and that suggested for Migdol is too uncertain, to be used for the purpose of determining it, and the site of Baal-zephon depends entirely upon those adopted for these two places. Formerly, indeed, it used to be supposed, on the strength of the expressions in Exo_14:22; Exo_15:8, that the passage took place in the deep water, some miles south of Suez, that the sea there literally parted asunder, and that through the chasm thus formed the Israelites passed, with a sheer wall of water on each side of them. But, if only for the reason that it is impossible to understand how any “wind” could have produced a chasm of this kind, or, even if it could have done so, how any man or body of men could have stood against it, this view has now been for long entirely abandoned. The following are the two views that have been more recently advocated:-
(1) That the passage took place near the modern Suez, either in the narrow arm of the gulf, some three-quarter mile broad, which extends now about two miles north of Suez, but,-to judge from the character of the soil, consisting of sand blown in from the desert on the east,-in ancient times probably extended further, or a little south of Suez: above Suez the water is shallow, and there are parts which can be crossed at low tide; immediately below Suez also there is a shoal, one mile broad, dry at low water. The Gulf of Suez is at this part enclosed by a range of hills on each side-the Jebel 'Ataka on the west coming close down to the sea, and the ridge of er-Rahah, twelve to fifteen miles off on the east; and partly on account of these hills the ebb and flow of the tide is here unusually dependent on the direction of the wind. “As is well known to observant men accustomed to navigate the Red Sea, a north-easterly gale, on reaching Suez, would then be drawn down between the high ranges which bound the gulf on either hand in such a manner as to change its direction from northeast to north, or even a little west of north. It would gather strength as it advanced, and by its action on an ebb tide would make it abnormally low, and prevent, while it lasted, at least for a time, the return of the usual flood-tide. In this way a good passage across the channel might soon be laid bare, and remain so for several hours. In the morning, a shift of wind to the south, probably of a cyclonic nature, takes place: the pent-up flood-tide, now freed from restraint, and urged on by the south gale ‘returns to its wonted flow,' and sweeps suddenly up the gulf, probably in a ‘bore' or tidal wave, and so overwhelms the pursuing Egyptians.”
(2) The other view takes the Israelites across a presumed ancient northern extension of the Gulf of Suez, which is considered highly probable by many modern authorities. The isthmus of Suez, at its narrowest part, is seventy miles across. Near the north end of the Gulf of Suez there extends for some ten miles a sort of marshy lagoon; then comes the Shaluf, a plateau twenty to twenty-five feet above the sea-level, and six miles long; after this, stretching in a north-westerly direction, the two “Bitter Lakes,” altogether about twenty-five miles long by two to six broad, connected by a shallow marshy channel a mile long, which, until an immense volume of water was let into them at the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 from the Mediterranean Sea, were nothing more than two great salt marshes, though twenty to forty feet deep in many parts; at the north end of these lakes there is again for eight miles a stretch of sand, rising in parts into dunes, with a stelè of Darius in the middle, which, from the ruins found there being supposed by the French engineers to have been a temple of Osiris, is now known as the Serapeum; then comes Lake Timsah (the “Crocodile Lake”), at the east end of Wady Tumilat, five miles long by one-half to two miles broad, which, like the Bitter Lakes, till it was flooded for the Suez Canal, was another salt marsh, filled with reeds: three miles north of Lake Timsah, the land rises to about fifty feet above the sea, and the highest point between the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Suez is reached, called el-Gisr (“the Embankment”), the cutting through of which for the Suez Canal was a work of immense labour: two or three miles north of el-Gisr is Lake Ballah; and north of this, between Lake Ballah and Lake Menzaleh, was the isthmus called el-Kantara, or the “Bridge,” over which went the old caravan route between Egypt and Palestine. There is no doubt that in remote prehistoric times (before the Pleistocene period) the Gulf of Suez and the Mediterranean Sea were connected with each other; and it has been supposed that in ancient historic times the Gulf of Suez extended as far north as Lake Timsah, on the south of the ridge of el-Gisr, just referred to; Sir J. W. Dawson, for instance, writing as a geologist, points out that the ground south of Lake Timsah is for the most part lower than the Red Sea, and is composed of recent deposits holding many Red Sea shells (Egypt and Syria, pp. 67-69). And so it has been held that the passage of the Israelites was made at some part of this northern extension of the Red Sea.1 [Note: S. R. Driver.]
2. This is the most dramatic incident in the history of the children of Israel. It is the one event which they never forgot. It is written deep in the nation's mind.
(1) They had passed in that night from Africa to Asia; they had crossed one of the great boundaries which divide the quarters of the world; a thought always thrilling, how much more so when we reflect on what a transition it involved to them. Behind the African hills, which rose beyond the Red Sea, lay the strange land of their exile and bondage-the land of Egypt with its mighty river, its immense buildings, its monster-worship, its grinding tyranny, its overgrown civilization. This they had left to revisit no more: the Red Sea flowed between them; the Egyptians whom they saw yesterday they will now see “no more again for ever.” And before them stretched the level plains of the Arabian desert, the desert where their fathers and their kindred had wandered in former times, where their great leader had fed the flocks of Jethro, through which they must advance onwards till they reach the Land of Promise.
(2) Further, this change of local situation was at once a change of moral condition.-From slaves they had become free; from an oppressed tribe they had become an independent nation. It is their deliverance from slavery. It is the earliest recorded instance of a great national emancipation. In later times religion has been so often and so exclusively associated with ideas of order, of obedience, of submission to authority, that it is well to be occasionally reminded that it has had other aspects also. This, the first epoch of Old Testament history, is, in its original significance, the sanctification, the glorification of national independence and freedom. Whatever else was to succeed to it, this was the first stage of the progress of the chosen people. And when in the Christian Scriptures and in the Christian Church we find the passage of the Red Sea taken as the likeness of the moral deliverance from sin and death,-when we read in the Apocalypse of the vision of those who stand victorious on the shores of “the glassy sea mingled with fire, having the harps of God, and singing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb,”-these are so many sacred testimonies to the importance and the sanctify of freedom, to the wrong and the misery of injustice, oppression and tyranny. The word “redemption,” which has now a sense far holier and higher, first entered into the circle of religious ideas at the time when God “redeemed his people from the house of bondage.”
(3) And this deliverance-the first and greatest in their history-was effected, not by their own power, but by the power of God. There are moments in the life both of men and of nations, both of the world and of the Church, when vast blessings are gained, vast dangers averted, through our own exertions-by the sword of the conqueror, by the genius of the statesman, by the holiness of the saint. Such, in Jewish history, was the conquest of Palestine by Joshua, the deliverances wrought by Gideon, by Samson, and by David. Such, in Christian history, were the revolutions effected by Clovis, by Charlemagne, by Alfred, by Joan of Arc, and by Luther. But there are moments of still higher interest, of still more solemn feeling, when deliverance is brought about not by any human energy, but by causes beyond our own control. Such, in Christian history, are the raising of the siege of Leyden, and the overthrow of the Armada; and such, above all, was the passage of the Red Sea.
Whatever were the means employed by the Almighty-whatever the path which He made for Himself in the great waters-it was to Him, and not to themselves, that the Israelites were compelled to look as the source of their escape. “Stand still, and see the salvation of Jehovah,” was their only duty. “Jehovah hath triumphed gloriously,” was their only song of victory. It was a victory into which no feeling of pride or self-exaltation could enter. It was a fit opening of a history and of a character which was to be specially distinguished from that of other races by its constant and direct dependence on the Supreme Judge and Ruler of the world. Greece and Rome could look back with triumph to the glorious days when they had repulsed their invaders, and risen on their tyrants, or driven out their kings. But the birthday of Israel-the birthday of the religion, of the liberty, of the nation, of Israel-was the passage of the Red Sea;-the likeness in this, as in so many other respects, of the yet greater events in the beginnings of the Christian Church, of which it has been long considered the anticipation and the emblem. It was the commemoration, not of what man has wrought for God, but of what God has wrought for man. No baser thoughts, no disturbing influences, could mar the overwhelming sense of thankfulness with which, as if after a hard-won battle, the nation found its voice in the first Hebrew melody, in the first burst of national poetry, which still lives on through Handel's music, to keep before the mind of all Western Christendom the day “when Israel came out of Egypt, and the house of Jacob from a strange land.”1 [Note: A. P. Stanley, History of the Jewish Church, i. 116.]
The chief object of the whole Mosaic narrative seems to be that of emphasizing the significance of the Divine self-revelation implied in Israel's deliverance from Egypt. The marvels of the Exodus, like some of our Lord's miracles, appear to have been intended to arrest attention, and to rivet Israel's gaze, as it were, upon its Divine teacher. “Jehovah alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him.”1 [Note: R. L. Ottley, Aspects of the Old Testament, 139.]
Mr. Harold Begbie in In the Hand of the Potter tells of a man who seeing himself as morally diseased “became the doctor of his own soul, felt the pulse of his moral nature, and kept a chart of his soul's temperature.” He kept a register of sins actually committed with a view to their reduction, and betook himself to prayer. Then some tracts came into his hand for printing. In reading the proof this text, “Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord,” caught him by the soul, and held the beatings of the brain. These words were like an injunction particular to himself!… “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.” In vain did he try to shake off their impression. The thought had fastened upon his consciousness. It clung to him like an embrace. He was obliged to stand still. It seemed to him quite clear what he was to do. He was to abandon anxiety, to give up his chart, to discontinue self-examination, to relinquish all striving, wrestling and effort. He was to do nothing. He was to be not active but passive. It was not for him to climb to God, but for God to descend to him. If there was something outside the atmosphere of the planet, it would be given, it would not be captured. The soul receives, it does not discover. Let him stand still and await the will of God. The mystery happened in a night, or rather early morning, in the grey dawn before the man had risen. He came out of sleep with the thought of Jesus Christ. “Under the grey dawn there stood and breathed the Son of Man. Eye could see nothing, ear could hear nothing, hand could touch nothing. And yet he was not alone. More real to him than roof, or sky or trees, was the sense of this invisible presence. Its influence was closer to him than the air he breathed; and its blessing, as real and unmistakable as the scent of violets, was a peace of soul passing all understanding. His mind was at rest.”2 [Note: Harold Begbie, In the Hand of the Potter, 220.]
