Exodus 14:26-31

PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA(ACCOMPLISHED)

"And Jehovah said unto Moses, Stretch out thy hand over the sea, that the waters may come again upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen. And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its strength when the morning appeared; and the Egyptians fled against it; and Jehovah overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. And the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, even all the host of Pharaoh that went in after them into the sea; there remained not so much as one of them. But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea; and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left. Thus Jehovah saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore. And Israel saw the great work which Jehovah did upon the Egyptians, and the people feared Jehovah: and they believed in Jehovah, and in his servant Moses."

The alleged moral problem. How could God have destroyed mercilessly such a great host of people? Is this consistent with the revelation of God which has come to us through the Lord Jesus Christ? The answer is certainly YES. The current notion, held by many, that Almighty God will eternally overlook and tolerate human wickedness, cruelty, oppression, and violence is NOT a true understanding of God. God is angry with the wicked every day, and there is sure to come a time when God in righteous wrath shall rise and cast evil out of His universe. As for those "poor Egyptians," think of the mission upon which they were engaged. Every one of them was armed with military weapons. They were intent on killing whatever thousands or hundreds of thousands of Israel that they might have found necessary to their purpose of returning all of them to work perpetually in the brickyards of Egypt as slaves! We have no respect at all for the silly quibble that it was immoral for God to have destroyed the Egyptian death squad in the very act of their ruthless mission. If one wishes to discover "immorality" somewhere, it is in such thoughts that question the righteousness of God.

Most of the specifics in this paragraph have already been noted in the comments above, and what we have here is somewhat a recapitulation and summary of the mighty act of Jehovah. The result is stated in Exodus 14:31, where faith in God and in his servant Moses was established in Israel. It is a sorrow that this faith did not continue unabated. Wherever and whenever the occasion came, Israel always seemed ready to murmur and complain.

"The horsemen ..." (Exodus 14:26). The text requires that these be understood, not as mounted cavalry, but as drivers of the chariot horses.[20]

"The Hebrew text is remarkably in accordance with the native monuments of the time, which represent the army of Pharaoh as composed of only two descriptions of troops, a chariot, and an infantry force."[21]

"The sea returned to its strength ..." This clearly means that the portion of the sea crossed by Israel was normally of sufficient depth to cover completely an entire division of chariots, horses, drivers, riders and all. The picture here is not of some marsh covered with reeds, or of some type of shallow swamp, but of a body of water called a "sea" 17 times in the 31 verses of this chapter!

"There remained not so much as one of them ..." This loss by Pharaoh of the entire striking force of his army, the chariot divisions, alone accounts for the fact that, "Israel enjoyed an undisturbed retreat through a district then subject to Egypt and easily accessible to their forces (if they had had any!).[22] During the whole period of the forty years in the wilderness, no Egyptian offered one breath of opposition to Israel.

Did Pharaoh himself perish in this disaster? We believe that he did. (See the notes above.) Of course, this is disputed on the basis of its not being specifically mentioned in this summary, and also upon the basis of there having been found no reference to any such death of a Pharaoh on any of the ancient monuments thus far discovered. However, it is a naive and foolish supposition that any Egyptian government would have memorialized a fiasco like Pharaoh's Red Sea adventure on a public monument. Until the U.S.A. erects a monument to Benedict Arnold, it would seem impossible to expect such a thing. The death of Pharaoh in the Red Sea can neither be proved nor disproved by the archeologists.

When any scholar comes up with a name for the Pharaoh who PROBABLY perished in the pursuit of Israel, the critics always counter with an objection to it. Such an objection was dealt with by Dummelow as follows:

"The supposed discovery in modern times of the mummy of Merenptah is no argument against his being the Pharaoh of the Exodus, or against the truth of this narrative. Even though he did lead his host into the midst of the sea and perish with the others, his body might have been recovered and preserved."[23]

"Jehovah saved Israel that day out of the hands of the Egyptians ..." The Biblical record is always at great pains to ascribe the power, and the glory, and the victory, not to Moses, but to Jehovah the God of Israel. Likewise, men should, at all times, be careful to ascribe the glory and the honor and the power, not to themselves or to their fellows, but to Almighty God through Jesus Christ our Lord. "Unto the Lamb be the blessing, and the honor, and the glory, and the dominion, forever and ever." (Revelation 5:13).

"And they saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore ..." An appropriate comment on this clause in Exodus 14:31 is the following quotation from Josephus:

"On the next day Moses gathered together the weapons of the Egyptians, which were brought to the camp of the Hebrews by the current of the sea, and the force of the winds; and he conjectured that this also happened by Divine Providence, that so they might not be destitute of weapons. So, when he had ordered the Hebrews to arm themselves with them, he led them to Mount Sinai to offer sacrifice to God, and to render oblations for the salvation of the multitude, as he was charged to do beforehand.[24]

When the Great Seal of the United States was being designed, Benjamin Franklin proposed the following design for the reverse:

"Pharaoh sitting in an open chariot, a crown on his head and a sword in his hand, passing through the divided waters of the Red Sea in pursuit of the Israelites. Rays from the pillar of fire in the cloud, expressive of the Divine Presence beaming upon Moses, who stands on the shore, extending his hand over the sea, causing it to overflow Pharaoh. With the inscription "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God!"[25]

The marvelous events of this chapter declare in tones of thunder that Israel did not just happen; it was created by a sovereign act of the eternal God. That what happened here actually occurred is certain. One would be as justified in denying the American Revolution as in denying this. It is memorialized in the song and story of nearly thirty-five centuries, and commemorated by the continuous observance throughout those millenniums of the Jewish Passover with its attendant rites, and the unbroken preaching of it for almost 2,000 years of Christianity. The sacred religion of Jesus Christ has deep roots in the historical types of this Mighty Deliverance; and the Divine promises to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are witnessed and confirmed as truthful and authentic by the thunders of Exodus.

Spiritually, this event is unsurpassed by anything else in the O.T. Here we see faith rewarded, and unbelief defeated and destroyed. We see proud tyranny and oppression cast down to oblivion and death. We see the mightiest military machine on earth broken, defeated, and destroyed by a shepherd's crook. We see a nation of slaves given their liberty and we see the great pantheon of pagan gods yield their dominion unequivocally to the one true and Almighty Living God, Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews. The experience in the wilderness of that liberated nation of slaves has become a type for all ages to come of the struggles of the true people of God against the temptations and hardships of earthly probation. And we see in their final entry into the Promised Land the pledge of Divine Promise that at last the faithful "in Christ" shall enter into that upper and better kingdom where all the problems of earth shall be solved in the light and bliss of Heaven! Blessed be the name of the Lord. Amen.