No Way but Yahweh

Exodus 14:19-31   |   9/15/2002

Stories of maritime voyages have always been thrilling, going back to Homer's tales of epic, perilous adventures. But at the edge of the Red Sea, the Israelites had nothing - no vessel, ship, boat or raft. Nothing but the power and presence of the one Lord God.

We can't believe that the senior editor of Homiletics, Timothy Merrill, would share this story with anyone, let alone the Homiletics audience, and by extension a couple million worshipers across the country. But here goes:

I had been the pastor of a church in Oregon. It was situated in the Willamette Valley, only 45 minutes from the coast. We had been there for eight years, and were about to move to Colorado, and I realized that I had never gone deep sea fishing, something that most of the people in my congregation, especially the men, had done many times.

I thought that before leaving the area I should at least have this experience once. I was nervous, because I get nauseous on a swing. But on the day I signed up to go out on a little fishing boat off Depoe Bay, Oregon, the weather was clear, the ocean was calm. Our little group of a dozen was excited. There were some husbands and wives there for an outing, as well as a couple of grandmothers in rubber boots, sturdy coats and hats. And myself.

We set out. The charter company provided the gear and the bait. The two grandmas were out near the prow of the boat fixing their poles and lines. And I was getting a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

The ocean swells could not have been more than 2-3 feet in height, but soon I was on my knees at the port side of the boat heaving until I could heave no more. Dreadfully sick. I despaired of life. I wanted nothing more in the world than that the skipper of the boat would turn about and head for harbor. I didn't care about the future. I didn't care if I saw the face of my dear wife ever again. I didn't care if I ever saw my children again at play, or school, or banging through a piece at the piano recital. I only wanted and fervently prayed that the good Lord would take me home to glory and remove me from my misery.

Of course, I made it back, weak and weary - and utterly ashamed.

I've never set foot on a boat again.

Not everyone is as spineless as our senior editor. Maria Coffey and her husband Dag paddled their folding kayak around the Solomon Islands, along the Ganges, across Lake Malawi, and down the Danube, a story she tells in her book A Boat in Our Baggage: Around the World With a Kayak. They journeyed all around the earth in a collapsible double kayak.

Would you really want to be traveling on the ocean in anything that was "collapsible"?

Imagine now, what the Israelites were feeling when they stood at the shore of the Red Sea. They were feeling trapped, with the sea in front of them and the Egyptian army at their backs. The Israelites were like cats - not a water-loving species - and when they looked to the sea they saw nothing but the waters of chaos, the place where danger lurks, where good things do not happen.

"Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?" they cried to Moses, their voices dripping with sarcasm (Exodus 14:11). How they wished at that moment that they were like the neighboring Phoenicians, accomplished navigators and sailors who made voyages throughout the Mediterranean for the establishment of colonies and commerce. If only the Israelites could have picked up some tricks from these successful seafarers who voyaged across the Mediterranean, outside the Straits of Gibraltar, into the Atlantic, and down the coast of Africa.

But at that moment, at the edge of the Red Sea, the Israelites had nothing. No vessel, ship, boat, canoe or raft. Not even a collapsible, double kayak.

Then God said, "There's no way but Yahweh." All they had was the power and presence of the one Lord God. And that, of course, was more than enough. Exodus tells us that "The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left" (14:21-22).

Then the pursuing armies went after them with horses, chariots and chariot drivers. But the Lord threw them into panic, clogged their chariot wheels, and then, as a final death blow, flooded the entire army of Pharaoh with the waters of the Red Sea. "Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians," concludes Exodus; "and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore" (v. 30).

We know the famous story of this crossing. And we give thanks that God worked so powerfully in this event to save the lives of his chosen people. But we also know that in our own lives, we can't always count on a miracle to come along and get us out of a jam. When we find ourselves with a sea in front of us and an army at our backs, there is no promise that the sea will open up for us, that dry ground will appear, and that our enemies and opponents and pains and problems will be swallowed up in defeat behind us.

More often than not, we have to get in a boat and start rowing. And when we do, God makes a way when there seems to be no way.

When we face sea crossings in our personal lives, it is so important to put our trust in the same thing that the Israelites did: the power and presence of the one Lord God. We make a fatal error when we try to row across the sea ourselves, or put too much faith in our own cleverness and ingenuity. It's best to be honest about our human limitations, and to make a crossing in the style of Hannes Lindemann, who, in 1956, sailed solo across the Atlantic, putting up handmade sails to catch a power beyond himself, and who pulled raw fish like daily manna from the sea.

The promise of God to us is clear: "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you" (Isaiah 43:2). The Lord gives us the assurance that he will be with us in all of our perilous passages, working to protect us and guide us and preserve us. The love of God for us is undeniable, and Scripture promises us that many waters cannot quench this love, neither can floods drown it (Song of Solomon 8:7). There is nothing in all creation, nothing on land or sea or air, that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:39).

So we, like the ancient Israelites, can count on God's power and God's presence and God's steadfast love when we face our own sea crossings. The Lord promises to bring us through the water - through the water of chaos, and danger, and even great beasts - and to see us safely to the other side. God promises to be with us when we face:

• The sea crossing of a fresh school year, with unfamiliar teachers, classmates and subjects.

• The sea crossing of a new job, with unexpected challenges and responsibilities.

• The sea crossing of a lost relationship, with feelings of regret and uncertainty and self-doubt.

• The sea crossing of a serious illness, with sadness and fear and exhaustion and pain.

• The sea crosing of a death in the family, with shock and anger and confusion and grief.

• The sea crossing of a new relationship, with feelings of excitement and hope and ever-present anxiety.

Through all these crossings, the Lord promises to be with us, giving us proper wind for our sails and nourishment for our spirits. All God asks is that we stay as close to him as he is to us, and that we trust him to be always at work for good in our lives. We should recall that in another famous sea crossing, Jesus and his disciples were in a boat being threatened by a terrible storm. Waves were swamping the boat and the disciples were panicking, and then Jesus woke up and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!"

When the wind ceased, Jesus asked the disciples, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" (Mark 4:35-41).

These are good questions for us, as we face our own sea crossings. Do we have faith that God will preserve us from destruction? Do we trust that the Lord will give us courage and victory in the middle of our struggles? Do we believe that God will see us through the storm, and deliver us safely to the other side?

The sea is large and our boat is small. But with God we never sail alone.

Source:
Theodoulou, Michael. "Shipwreck holds clues to lives of ancient mariners." The Christian Science Monitor, March 29, 2001.

Commentary

The story of Israel's crossing of the Red Sea is found in two versions in Exodus, a prose account in chapter 14 (usually regarded as the earlier account, 14:19-31), and a verse account, the so-called "Song of Moses," in chapter 15. Although not identical in details or sequence, the two accounts nonetheless recount, with a high degree of similarity, the central act of liberation for the Hebrew people. The exodus, with the crossing of the Red Sea at its center, became in Israel's religious memory and imagination, the paradigmatic act of Israel's god on Israel's behalf. The annual celebration of the Passover became the commemorative ritual celebrating the exodus from Egypt (Exodus 12:14-17).

The exodus proper - the actual movement of the people - begins at 12:33, immediately following the 10th and final plague against the Egyptians, the slaughter of the firstborn. A summary of the events of the exodus is found at Numbers 33:1-49. The flight of the people - numbered at more than 600,000 foot soldiers (Exodus 12:37; Numbers 1:46), not counting the noncombatants, which could have brought the total to three or more times that number - was well under way by the time the Israelites found themselves, in today's lesson, trapped between Pharaoh's pursuing army and the sea (14:1-18).

Although the divine proper name Yahweh is used throughout most of the exodus narrative, the passages dealing with the pillar(s) of cloud and fire (13:17-22; 14:19-24) also use the generic name God (e.g., 13:17-19). Coincidentally, one of the historical anachronisms in the narrative - mention of the "Philistines" long before the Philistines emerged as a distinct nation (13:17) - occurs in the pillar(s) context, suggesting that the references to the pillar(s) of cloud and fire may have come from a tradition originally separate from the surrounding narrative. Given the storm god imagery often associated with Israel's national god (almost certainly adapted from the imagery of the Canaanite storm god, Baal), it is no surprise that pillars of cloud and fire would be widely associated with Yahweh, independent of historical (or semihistorical) narratives.

The divine being associated with the "pillar of cloud" (v. 19) is described here as an "angel of God." Elsewhere (e.g., 13:21, 14:24) it is the LORD who is said to be in the pillar(s). Although this detail again suggests a blending of originally distinct sources, the blending is a common one (e.g., 3:1-6, where God alternates with the LORD; but note that in 3:2 the angel is described as an "angel of the LORD"). It is clear that the angel of God and the LORD were understood to represent the same divine being, with the former serving as a manifestation of the latter. This is the only reference to an angel either being associated with the pillar(s) or leading the Israelite army. That the angel and the pillar of cloud are to be identified is suggested by the fact that the pillar moves when the angel moves from in front of the Israelites to behind them, i.e., between them and the Egyptians (v. 20).

When the phenomenon of the pillar(s) was introduced in 13:21-22, the narrative indicated two pillars, a pillar of cloud to lead the Israelites by day (13:21) and a pillar of fire to lead them by night (13:22). The purpose of both pillars was to lead the people at all hours, so that their flight could be made more expeditious. Here, the movement of the pillar of cloud is literally to becloud the path of the Egyptians so that they became disoriented in their pursuit of the Israelites. The cloud functioned in the night as well as in the day, providing luminescence for the Israelites to maneuver out of harm's way (v. 20b). In 14:24, the two pillars of fire and cloud have become one pillar.


The LORD had commanded Moses in 14:16 to extend his staff over the sea (traditionally, but probably erroneously rendered as the "Red Sea," e.g., 10:19; 13:18; 15:4, etc. - the Septuagint was the first to make the connection between the Hebrew yam suf and the eastern branch of the Red Sea, but this is geographically unlikely). The gesture recalls 7:14-24, the first plague, Moses' striking the water of the Nile with his staff, turning it into blood. The gesture of stretching out a staff over water or land (or toward heaven) occurs in several of the plagues (e.g., 8:5-7, 16-17; 9:23; 10:12-13, 21-22) and its use here is both a continuation of and a reversal of its prior use: It is a salvific means of escape for the Hebrews, but death to the Egyptians.

The imagery of the drying up of the sea appears to combine elements of both sweeping aside ("drove the sea back," v. 21) and separating ("the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left," v. 22). Demanding literal precision on the point would do little justice to the mythic imagery underlying the prose, with its roots in ancient Near East creation mythology (including Israel's - see Isaiah 51:9-10; Job 26:13).

The poetic version in chapter 15 suggests yet different imagery, the sinking of the Egyptians into the sea (15:1b, 4; see also 14:27), rather than their being deluged from above or laterally by returning waters.

Much is made of Pharaoh's "chariots, and chariot drivers" (v. 23) in the account of Israel's flight from Egypt (with chariots being referred to nine times in these two chapters). At the narrative level, the emphasis placed on Pharaoh's powerful and sophisticated military machinery, in contrast to the defenseless Hebrews fleeing on foot, is meant to demonstrate that, despite overwhelming odds, the Hebrews were able to escape through the miraculous intervention of the LORD.

Historically, the Egyptian chariots mentioned here probably had a devastating psychological effect not only on the Israelites, but also on all Egypt's enemies who lacked the light, swift firing platforms that constituted the ancient two-wheeled chariot. Israel, of course, was never able to develop a significant chariot force, mainly because of its unsuitable hilly terrain and because of the relatively expensive array of specialized designers, craftsmen, and builders necessary for chariot production. The great advantage of the chariot - its wheeled speed - becomes in the exodus narrative its fatal liability: The LORD "clogged (the Hebrew says "removed") their chariot wheels so that they turned with difficulty" (v. 25). Becoming mired in the seabed not only effectively terminated the Egyptians' pursuit of the Hebrews, but the reluctance of the drivers to abandon such costly military equipment placed them directly in the path of destruction of the returning waters, which they realized too late (vv. 27-28).

Following Israel's narrow escape from the Egyptians, the passage concludes with the theological observation that the Israelites "saw" the dead Egyptians on the seashore (v. 30), and that Israel "saw" (i.e., understood) the Egyptian dead as a "great work" on Israel's behalf by their divine patron. The realization produced in the Israelites, however temporarily, both fear of the LORD and belief in the LORD and in "his servant Moses" (v. 31). This concluding observation is one of many reports of short-lived religious faithfulness emerging from dramatic divine intervention on Israel's behalf. The pattern established at the exodus would continue for much of Israel's religious history.

Animating Illustrations

Moses and his flock arrive at the sea, with the Egyptians in hot pursuit. Moses calls a staff meeting.

Moses: Well, how are we going to get across the sea? We need a fast solution. The Egyptians are close behind us.

The General of the Armies: Normally, I'd recommend that we build a pontoon bridge to carry us across. But there's not enough time - the Egyptians are too close.

The Admiral of the Navy: Normally, I'd recommend that we build barges to carry us across. But time is too short.

Moses: Does anyone have a solution?

Just then, his Public Relations man raises his hand.

Moses: You! You have a solution?

The PR Man: No, but I can promise you this: If you can find a way out of this one, I can get you two or three pages in the Old Testament.

-Harris Creative Group, "Religious Humor II," Voiceone.com/html/ religion2.html. Retrieved April 1, 2001.

"If God loved us, why did he take our 31-year-old son, Barry?" asks Carl Douglas in a story of faith in The Washington Post. "He was the joy of our lives, the son every parent dreams of having. Successful and full of joy, he was a principled young man who influenced many lives with his honesty and zest for life."

Barry was a coastal engineer working on a small boat off the coast of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, in March 1996. The crew was taking soil samples for a dredging project when a storm hit. A large wave overturned the boat, dumping all five occupants into the frigid water. All five perished.

Carl was angry with God, and his faith was a shambles. He read and reread the biblical account of Christ rescuing the disciples from a storm in the Sea of Galilee, and he wondered why God didn't rescue his son. He cried out to God: "You have taken our son, but can't we at least have his body for a decent burial? Why are you punishing us so severely?"

His family and friends prayed that Barry's remains would be found. After waiting three weeks, they scheduled a memorial service. A few hours before the service, Barry's body was miraculously found and identified. He was recovered 60 miles out to sea by fishermen on a small boat. The probability of that occurring in the ocean, says Carl, 23 days after the accident, and just hours before his memorial service, "was near zero without God's intervention."

God's answering this prayer was the first step in the restoration of Carl's faith.

Researchers are now suggesting that these stories are anything but fantasy, having roots in the real lives of ancient mariners. The recent discovery of a 2,300-year-old shipwreck - complete with wine jugs, boat pieces and even dinnerware among the remains - may prove to be the modern vindication of Homer's heroic tales. Apparently, these ancient seafaring peoples were anything but land-loving wimps. They were far more daring than originally thought.

Until recently, the remains of most ancient ships have been found in shallow waters, leading many scholars to believe that the captains, sailing without compasses, stayed in view of coastlines. But this particular shipwreck was discovered more than 200 miles off the Cyprus coast, and two miles below the surface. This deep-water discovery lends credence to Greek legends of fearless ocean odysseys.

Perhaps we should give some fresh respect to the trials of the prophet Jonah, who encountered such a mighty storm on his sea voyage to Tarshish that "the ship threatened to break up" (Jonah 1:4). And maybe we should read the book of Acts in a new light, perceiving the true mortal danger that Paul faced when his ship was pounded by a storm so violent that the sailors had to throw the cargo overboard, and then the tackle, and then finally run the ship aground (Acts 27). When facing stress and anxiety, we can gain inspiration from the stories of people like Hannes Lindemann. In 1956, this man crossed the Atlantic Ocean, totally unassisted, in a double-seater kayak. He had mail-ordered his boat to the Canary Islands, and set out for the Caribbean with 154 pounds of supplies and some handmade sails. Using both sail and paddle, and subsisting largely on raw fish and the enormous supply of evaporated milk and beer he had stowed in the craft, he arrived 72 days and 3,000 miles later on a beach in St. Martin. To date, his record remains unsurpassed.

Not all sea crossings end so well. In 1968, Donald Crowhurst set sail from England in a trimaran to compete in an around-the-world race. Instead, as revealed by his diaries later, he embarked on a massive deception, sailing in circles around the southern Atlantic before announcing by radio he was on his way home, the apparent victor. His abandoned boat was later found sailing itself - Crowhurst had written an agonized final entry in his log, and then jumped into the ocean, drowning himself.

In "base Christian communities," [people] meet to reflect on the neighborhoods and society within which they live, to interpret their lives by reading and reflecting on the Bible, and to act together in faithful response to God.

One such group is made up of middle-aged mothers living in the barrio of East Los Angeles. "I am very afraid for myself and my children; what are we going to do?" asked Lupe at one of their meetings. All agreed that they shared her fear; in their own front yards, they had seen beatings and shootings, drug sales and muggings. As was their habit, they turned to the Bible for help. The assigned text that evening was the story of Jesus calming the storm (Mark 4:35-41). They mused over the disciples' fear, and their own.

"I think that the sea is the barrio at night," one finally said, "and the wind is the gang kids with their drugs and their guns. If we had faith, we wouldn't be afraid of walking past them, or to ask them not to disturb us." But what would faith like this look like in their barrio-sea? That night, they formed a Campaign for Peace. They all agreed to sit on their porches at the same time that week; and when that time came, the astonished gang members grew uncomfortable and decided to go somewhere else.

-Frank Rogers Jr., "Discernment," Practicing Our Faith (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1997), 116-17. Used by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

While there are ancient and accurate charts of the sea that tell in exquisite detail what you may expect in all the great oceans, after a thousand generations of humanity, there are still no guidelines to determine whether the crew you are signing on be devils or angels. The fact is that you do not want either a devil or an angel. What is needed on a small boat over a long passage is someone whose faults are mildly attractive and whose good qualities do not cause your own to suffer by comparison.

You may range the globe round and take 10 years to do so. Should you not like the port you are in, there is always a better port over the horizon, or, should you tire of the pressures of land altogether, you may, like Moitessier, choose to simply "go round again." You become free as no one on land can. But you must have care and remain humble, for although the world is your oyster, your oyster still belongs to the sea.

-Reese Palley, a sailor who has made three transatlantic crossings and a circumnavigation in his 46-foot sailboat, Unlikely VII. Quotation is from his book There Be No Dragons: How to Cross a Big Ocean in a Small Sailboat (1996), posted on sheridanhouse.com/catalog/cruising/nodragons.html.

In the summer of 1965, Robert Manry crossed the Atlantic Ocean.

No big deal, if the passage was by commercial jet or luxury cruise ship. But Manry went by boat. By tiny boat. Less than 14 feet long. That's shorter than a Ford Explorer SUV.

Manry hopped aboard Tinkerbelle, a hand-built boat that many thought would never be able to make the journey, and sailed from Falmouth, Massachusetts, to Falmouth, England, making the crossing in 78 days. At the time, this was the smallest boat ever to complete the trip successfully. The human spirit needs challenges to accept and risks to take, and making solo ocean crossings is clearly one of them.

Glafkos Kariolou, the son of a pioneering Greek Cypriot diver ... insists it is "completely wrong" for any modern scientist to assume the ancients could not cross open seas.

They "possessed an ocean of maritime information" he says. Many archaeologists believe ancient Greek mariners 500 or 600 years before the Christian era were sailing to Cornwall, England, to bring tin and zinc back to Greece.

Because of the latest wreck's location and its cargo of Greek wine, it is thought the ship was bound for Egypt when it perished, possibly as a result of structural failure, collision or storm-tossed seas.

Because it is so deep, most of the amphorae are well-preserved, and the great depth and cold of the sea may even have preserved a portion of the ship's hull, according to the report in Archaeology.

Squatting upright among the tightly packed amphorae is a large, intact metal cauldron that Archaeology described as "the world's oldest and longest continuously deployed sediment trap."

Thomas Dettweiler, general manager and executive vice president of Nauticos says: "Who knows what kind of tools or utensils we'll find down there that will give us new understanding and answer many questions about ancient civilizations."

-Michael Theodoulou, "Shipwreck holds clues to lives of ancient mariners," The Christian Science Monitor, March 29, 2001.

The story of Israel's crossing of the Red Sea is found in two versions in Exodus, a prose account in chapter 14 (usually regarded as the earlier account, 14:19-31), and a verse account, the so-called "Song of Moses," in chapter 15. Although not identical in details or sequence, the two accounts nonetheless recount, with a high degree of similarity, the central act of liberation for the Hebrew people. The exodus, with the crossing of the Red Sea at its center, became in Israel's religious memory and imagination, the paradigmatic act of Israel's god on Israel's behalf. The annual celebration of the Passover became the commemorative ritual celebrating the exodus from Egypt (Exodus 12:14-17).

The exodus proper - the actual movement of the people - begins at 12:33, immediately following the 10th and final plague against the Egyptians, the slaughter of the firstborn. A summary of the events of the exodus is found at Numbers 33:1-49. The flight of the people - numbered at more than 600,000 foot soldiers (Exodus 12:37; Numbers 1:46), not counting the noncombatants, which could have brought the total to three or more times that number - was well under way by the time the Israelites found themselves, in today's lesson, trapped between Pharaoh's pursuing army and the sea (14:1-18).

Although the divine proper name Yahweh is used throughout most of the exodus narrative, the passages dealing with the pillar(s) of cloud and fire (13:17-22; 14:19-24) also use the generic name God (e.g., 13:17-19). Coincidentally, one of the historical anachronisms in the narrative - mention of the "Philistines" long before the Philistines emerged as a distinct nation (13:17) - occurs in the pillar(s) context, suggesting that the references to the pillar(s) of cloud and fire may have come from a tradition originally separate from the surrounding narrative. Given the storm god imagery often associated with Israel's national god (almost certainly adapted from the imagery of the Canaanite storm god, Baal), it is no surprise that pillars of cloud and fire would be widely associated with Yahweh, independent of historical (or semihistorical) narratives.

The divine being associated with the "pillar of cloud" (v. 19) is described here as an "angel of God." Elsewhere (e.g., 13:21, 14:24) it is the LORD who is said to be in the pillar(s). Although this detail again suggests a blending of originally distinct sources, the blending is a common one (e.g., 3:1-6, where God alternates with the LORD; but note that in 3:2 the angel is described as an "angel of the LORD"). It is clear that the angel of God and the LORD were understood to represent the same divine being, with the former serving as a manifestation of the latter. This is the only reference to an angel either being associated with the pillar(s) or leading the Israelite army. That the angel and the pillar of cloud are to be identified is suggested by the fact that the pillar moves when the angel moves from in front of the Israelites to behind them, i.e., between them and the Egyptians (v. 20).

When the phenomenon of the pillar(s) was introduced in 13:21-22, the narrative indicated two pillars, a pillar of cloud to lead the Israelites by day (13:21) and a pillar of fire to lead them by night (13:22). The purpose of both pillars was to lead the people at all hours, so that their flight could be made more expeditious. Here, the movement of the pillar of cloud is literally to becloud the path of the Egyptians so that they became disoriented in their pursuit of the Israelites. The cloud functioned in the night as well as in the day, providing luminescence for the Israelites to maneuver out of harm's way (v. 20b). In 14:24, the two pillars of fire and cloud have become one pillar.

The LORD had commanded Moses in 14:16 to extend his staff over the sea (traditionally, but probably erroneously rendered as the "Red Sea," e.g., 10:19; 13:18; 15:4, etc. - the Septuagint was the first to make the connection between the Hebrew yam suf and the eastern branch of the Red Sea, but this is geographically unlikely). The gesture recalls 7:14-24, the first plague, Moses' striking the water of the Nile with his staff, turning it into blood. The gesture of stretching out a staff over water or land (or toward heaven) occurs in several of the plagues (e.g., 8:5-7, 16-17; 9:23; 10:12-13, 21-22) and its use here is both a continuation of and a reversal of its prior use: It is a salvific means of escape for the Hebrews, but death to the Egyptians.

The imagery of the drying up of the sea appears to combine elements of both sweeping aside ("drove the sea back," v. 21) and separating ("the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left," v. 22). Demanding literal precision on the point would do little justice to the mythic imagery underlying the prose, with its roots in ancient Near East creation mythology (including Israel's - see Isaiah 51:9-10; Job 26:13).

The poetic version in chapter 15 suggests yet different imagery, the sinking of the Egyptians into the sea (15:1b, 4; see also 14:27), rather than their being deluged from above or laterally by returning waters.

Much is made of Pharaoh's "chariots, and chariot drivers" (v. 23) in the account of Israel's flight from Egypt (with chariots being referred to nine times in these two chapters). At the narrative level, the emphasis placed on Pharaoh's powerful and sophisticated military machinery, in contrast to the defenseless Hebrews fleeing on foot, is meant to demonstrate that, despite overwhelming odds, the Hebrews were able to escape through the miraculous intervention of the LORD.

Historically, the Egyptian chariots mentioned here probably had a devastating psychological effect not only on the Israelites, but also on all Egypt's enemies who lacked the light, swift firing platforms that constituted the ancient two-wheeled chariot. Israel, of course, was never able to develop a significant chariot force, mainly because of its unsuitable hilly terrain and because of the relatively expensive array of specialized designers, craftsmen, and builders necessary for chariot production. The great advantage of the chariot - its wheeled speed - becomes in the exodus narrative its fatal liability: The LORD "clogged (the Hebrew says "removed") their chariot wheels so that they turned with difficulty" (v. 25). Becoming mired in the seabed not only effectively terminated the Egyptians' pursuit of the Hebrews, but the reluctance of the drivers to abandon such costly military equipment placed them directly in the path of destruction of the returning waters, which they realized too late (vv. 27-28).

Following Israel's narrow escape from the Egyptians, the passage concludes with the theological observation that the Israelites "saw" the dead Egyptians on the seashore (v. 30), and that Israel "saw" (i.e., understood) the Egyptian dead as a "great work" on Israel's behalf by their divine patron. The realization produced in the Israelites, however temporarily, both fear of the LORD and belief in the LORD and in "his servant Moses" (v. 31). This concluding observation is one of many reports of short-lived religious faithfulness emerging from dramatic divine intervention on Israel's behalf. The pattern established at the exodus would continue for much of Israel's religious history.

Children's Sermon

Place a number of electronic devices in front of the children: a cell phone, an electronic date book, a calculator. Ask the children what these devices can do, and whether they are helpful or not. Then ask if you can always trust such fancy equipment. Tell them, "No! Cell phone conversations can be interrupted by static, electronic date books can fall and break, calculator batteries can wear out at the worst possible time." Let the children know that it is dangerous to put too much trust in technology. Explain that the Egyptians put trust in their technology when they were chasing the Israelites - the Egyptians had the very best chariots in the area. Ask the children if they know what happened when the Egyptians reached the Red Sea. God "clogged their chariot wheels so that they turned with difficulty" (Exodus 14:25). Point out that the very best technology was stopped by mud! Then ask if the children know what can always be trusted in place of fancy equipment. Answer: God! Close by telling the children that "the LORD saved Israel that day from the Egyptians" (v. 30).

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