Verses 15-25
The strong east wind that God sent (Exodus 14:21) recalls the wind from God that swept over the face of the primeval waters in creation (Genesis 1:2). The cloud became a source of light to the fleeing Israelites but darkness to the pursuing Egyptians (Exodus 14:19-20).
"Thus the double nature of the glory of God in salvation and judgment, which later appears so frequently in Scripture, could not have been more graphically depicted." [Note: Kaiser, "Exodus," p. 389.]
The angel switched from guiding to guarding the Israelites. The strong east wind was another miracle like those that produced the plagues (Exodus 14:21; cf. Psalms 77:16-19).
The two million Israelites could have passed through the sea in the time the text says if they crossed in a wide column, perhaps a half-mile wide (Exodus 14:22). Some interpreters take the wall of water literally and others interpret it figuratively.
"The metaphor [water like a wall] is no more to be taken literally than when Ezra 9:9 says that God has given him a ’wall’ (the same word) in Israel. It is a poetic metaphor to explain why the Egyptian chariots could not sweep in to right and left, and cut Israel off; they had to cross by the same ford, directly behind the Israelites." [Note: Cole, p. 121. Cf. Cassuto, pp. 167-69.]
Nevertheless nothing in the text precludes a literal wall of water. [Note: Davis, pp. 163-68, listed several ways of understanding what happened.] This seems to be the normal meaning of the text.
The text does not say that Pharaoh personally perished in the Red Sea (cf. Exodus 14:8; Exodus 14:10; Exodus 14:28; Psalms 106:7-12; Psalms 136:13-15). [Note: Cole, p. 120. Cf. Jack Finegan, Let My People Go, p. 87; and Oliver Blosser, "Did the Pharaoh of the Exodus Drown in the Red Sea?" It’s About Time, (July 1987):11.]
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