Exodus 14:22

II. ISRAEL AND EGYPT IN THE SEA.

22. The children of Israel went into the midst of the sea.

Moses and Aaron probably led the way, and then all Israel followed, in the night, without moon, lighted only by the pillar of fire. So it is God's light alone that leads us when we flee from Egypt and are baptized, not "unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea," but into Christ. If the Israelites marched over in. column half. mile wide it would require about two hours to pass the narrow strait.

The waters were. wall.

Not perpendicular cliffs, as they are sometimes pictured, but. defense. That is the idea alone. The waters on each side were. protection from attack upon their flanks, while the cloud was in the rear. God could make the water stand in precipices if he should so choose, and such. conception is more impressive to the imagination, but it is certain that the language of the text may mean simply that the water was. protection on the right and on the left flanks of the host. Thus, in Nahum 3:8, No (Thebes) is said to have the sea (the broad Nile) for. rampart and wall; that is,. defense,. protection against enemies. It is true that in poetical passages the waters are said to have stood "as. heap" (Exodus 15:8; Psalms 78:13); but so they are also, in the same style, said to have been "congealed in the heart of the sea," and the peaks of the trembling Horeb are said to have "skipped like rams" and the "little hills like lambs" (Psalms 114:4). Of course these expressions are not to be literally and prosaically interpreted. Different minds will assign different degrees of the supernatural to the transaction. But (1) the movements of Israel by divine order were prescribed, and to these the blowings of the wind were precisely timed, measured, and even changed from east to west. (2) The two armies were long in such proximity that Israel could easily, have been destroyed had not Pharaoh been deterred and blinded by the "pillar." (3) The ordinary tidal action of the sea must have been better known to Pharaoh and his generals than to Israel. That the whole should have been so executed as to save all Israel and to destroy all the Egyptians is unaccountable on merely natural assumptions.-- F. H. Newhall.