Exodus 14

III. THE VICTORY.

Israel’s Victory. Exodus 14:1 to Exodus 15:21 .

INTRODUCTORY.

In the Red (Reedy or Coral) Sea, the last remnant of the Egyptian bondage is now to be washed away. This sea, which was henceforth to be so famous in the history of Israel, was called both by Egyptians and Hebrews the “Sea of Reeds” rushes or sedge meaning, perhaps, the papyrus; and there are two places near the Gulf of Suez which are still called the “Bed of Reeds” remnants, probably, of great fields of papyrus which flourished there of old. Pi-hahiroth, before which Israel next encamped, owes its name to the same famous plant, meaning “the place where the sedge grows.” The origin of the name “Red Sea” is much disputed, some (Scaliger, Bochart) deriving it from the red sandstone cliffs of Edom, others (R. Stuart Poole, etc.) from the red race on its coasts, since the Arabs call themselves “the red men,” in distinction from the white Caucasians, yellow Turanians, and black negroes; while others, with more probability, derive the name from the red coral reefs and sandstones in its bed. Only the last derivation accounts for its application by the classic writers to the adjacent Indian Ocean. Newbold speaks of the surface, when the rays of the sun fell upon it at a small angle, as “marked with annular, crescent-shaped, and irregular blotches of a purplish red, extending as far as the eye could reach. They were curiously contrasted with the beautiful aquamarine colour of the water lying over the white coral reefs. This red colour I ascertained to be caused by the subjacent red sandstone and reddish coral reefs.” (STANLEY’S Sinai and Palestine, p. 6, note.) These coral reefs fringe the shores, often to a width of fifty miles.

The Sea is more than thirteen hundred miles in length, from Suez to the Straits of Bab-el-mandel, and one hundred and ninety-two miles wide at the broadest part, under the seventeenth parallel of north latitude, whence it narrows pretty uniformly north and south, being seventy-two miles wide at Ras (or Cape) Mohammed, where it is cloven into the two gulfs, Suez and Akabah, by the great triangular wedge of the mountainous Sinai wilderness. It is the shores of these two northern gulfs or arms of the Sea which are famous in the history of Israel. The western arm, the Gulf of Suez or Heroopolis, witnessed Israel’s birth, as, somewhere within sight of what is now Suez, its divided waters were to the Hebrews a highway out of servitude and to the Egyptians a grave. The eastern arm, the Gulf of Akabah, saw the kingdom of Israel in its meridian glory, when the fleets of Solomon, manned by the sailors of Tyre, swept down along its steep shores to Indian or Arabian Ophir. This eastern gulf is the southern termination of the long, chasm-like valley in which lie the Dead Sea and the Jordan. It is a narrow, deep ravine, about one hundred miles long and sixteen broad, walled in by bare, precipitous mountains of red granite and black basalt, tipped here and there with sandstone, which rises in cliffs from one to two thousand feet high.

The Gulf of Suez, which is the Red Sea of the Exodus, is now about one hundred and eighty miles in length, and twenty in average width. It anciently, however, extended much farther north, probably reaching within historic times to Lake Timsah, with which it is now connected by the canal; but its northern extremity has receded, some think as much as fifty miles, in consequence of the rising of the land or the encroachment of the drifting sands of the desert. A large extent of country about the head of the Gulf, once comparatively fertile and populous, irrigated, as it was, abundantly from the Nile, has thus become an utter wilderness. Towns which were ports of the Pharaohs are now sand-covered ruins in the desert. At the present head of the Gulf, two miles north of Suez, there are extensive shoals, which at low tide are left bare and hard, reaching from one to two miles below the town, leaving only a narrow and winding channel, by which small vessels come up to Suez, while larger craft and steamers lie full two miles below. The tide rises five or six feet upon these shoals. Robinson was told that it reached seven feet, while Du Bois-Ayme ( Descrip. de l’Egypte) calls it about two metres, (six and a half feet,) and says that after southern storms it rises to the height of twenty-six decimetres, or about eight and a half feet. There are fords above and below Suez, but Niebuhr and others have noted that the tide rises and falls so suddenly that there is great danger in crossing when it is near the flood. It is well known that in 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte and his suite came thus very near meeting the fate of Pharaoh when returning by this ford from Ayin Mousa to Suez, and that, too, when crossing under the guidance of natives. ( Descrip. de l’Egypte, Antiq. Mem., 8, 118.)

The Gulf, as will be seen from the map, narrows suddenly at Suez, where it is only eleven hundred and fifty yards wide, while it is three or four miles wide at a short distance south, and twelve or fifteen miles wide just below Ras Attakah. There is a hard gravel plain, ten miles square, west of Suez, sloping from Ajrud toward the Gulf, and reaching the hills of Attakah on the south. On this plain it is probable that the Israelites encamped before Pi-hahiroth, which was, most likely, an Egyptian garrison, and is now probably represented by the square fortress and deep bitter well of Ajrud. The mountain range of Attakah runs from the Nile east to the Sea, terminating in the Ras or Cape Attakah, a promontory twelve miles south of Suez, but also skirting the Sea north of the Cape, so as to form a defile, along which runs a road, between Mount Attakah and the Sea, from Wady et Tih to Suez. South of Cape Attakah is the broad plain of Baideah, and south of this is another mountain chain running from the Gulf to the Nile. These two ranges are the northern and southern walls of the Wady et Tih, an ancient caravan route from Memphis to the Sea. The northern or Attakah range is broken by a branch of valley near the middle, along which another route runs from the main valley northeast to the head of the Gulf.

This description is, with the aid of the maps, sufficient to make clear the different routes suggested for the passage of Israel. Messrs. Pool, ( Smith’s Dict.,) Sharpe, ( Hist. of Egypt,) and others, following Du Bois-Ayme, ( De-scrip, de l’Egypte,) suppose that the passage took place above the present head of the Gulf, some distance north of Suez; but most travellers consider that it was near Suez, or Baideah. If Baideah, they could have reached this plain from Etham, as above located, by a difficult march through the defile around the Promontory of Attakah, or by the branch valley above described, which would have taken them into the Wady et Tih, through which they would then have moved east to Baideah and the Sea. Sicard and Raumer, agreeing apparently with Josephus, supposed that the Israelites came from Latopolis, on the Nile, directly through the Wady et Tih to Baideah, and that the “turn” at Etham (Exodus 14:2) was leaving on the left the branch valley above mentioned, which would have taken them around the head of the Gulf . Baideah is a broad plain in the mouth of the wady or valley, with mountain walls on the north and the south, and with the Sea before it, so that if the Egyptians had blocked with a few troops the defile on the north, or left flank, of Israel, and closed up behind them on the west, they would certainly have been effectually hemmed in on all sides . In many respects this place precisely fits the Scripture requirements, and exactly suits Josephus’s description of the position of Israel, shut “in the jaws of the mountains,” so that many judicious travellers, as Sicard, Raumer, Shaw, Olin, and Kitto, have regarded it as the scene of the great deliverance.

But an insuperable difficulty seems to be that the Gulf is here about fifteen miles wide, and it was certainly no narrower then. This is not, of course, too wide for the supernatural part of the transaction, but it is for the natural part the march of the vast host of Israel, six hundred thousand men, with at least twice as many women and children, with wagons, herds, and flocks, and also of the Egyptian army, during the night after “the strong east wind” had “caused the sea to go back,” and before the dawn of day. Fifteen miles is a good day’s march for a well-appointed army. Hence Niebuhr, Robinson, Hengstenberg, Tischendorf, Stanley, Winer, and most modern travellers, regard Suez or its immediate vicinity as the scene of the passage. Murphy, ( Com. on Exodus, in loc.,) it is true, finds time for the march of the southern passage, by supposing that the women, children, and flocks went round the head of the Gulf; but few will be satisfied with the supposition in the absence of all proof from the record. The sea at Suez was, as above shown, wider then than now, and a passage of three or four miles, direct or diagonal, might there have been made from shore to shore, which could have been effected in the specified time, and here would also have been ample room for the overthrow of the Egyptian army. (Robinson, Bib. Researches, 1: 56; Kurtz, Hist. of Old Covenant, ii, § 36.)