Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Exodus · About this commentary
The Long Way Round
Exodus 13:17-22
17 When Pharaoh had let the people go, God didn’t lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, “Lest perhaps the people change their minds when they see war, and they return to Egypt”; · WEB
God routes a newly freed people away from the short road because he knows what they cannot yet survive.
When Pharaoh had let the people go, God didn't lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, "Lest perhaps the people change their minds when they see war, and they return to Egypt" Exodus 13:17.
The coastal road to Canaan was the shortest route and the best maintained, and it was garrisoned. God avoids it, and the reason given is not strategic but psychological: a people one week out of slavery would meet an army, lose their nerve, and go back. The reasoning is stated in advance so that the detour cannot later be mistaken for an accident.
Two things follow that are worth holding together. God knows what this nation can bear, and the estimate is not flattering — they would break, and he says so. And the route is chosen to accommodate the weakness rather than to expose it. The longer road is a concession to people who are not ready, made by someone who intends to get them there anyway.
It is also worth noticing what the detour costs. The shortest way would have taken days; the way actually traveled takes a generation and buries almost everyone who set out. The gentler road is not the easier one, and the narrative never suggests it was.
But God led the people around by the way of the wilderness by the Red Sea; and the children of Israel went up armed out of the land of Egypt Exodus 13:18.
They are armed, which raises the obvious question about the previous verse: a company carrying weapons still cannot face war, because courage is not equipment. From Succoth they camp at the edge of the wilderness and the direction is already strange, since it leads away from the promised land rather than toward it.
Moses took the bones of Joseph with him Exodus 13:19.
A coffin joins the march. Joseph had made his brothers swear it four hundred years earlier, with a sentence that was pure faith when he said it — God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones away from here with you Genesis 50:25. He had risen to the top of Egypt and refused to be buried in it. Somebody kept track of that coffin through four centuries of slavery, and on the morning of the departure it was found and carried, which says something about a hope that survived in the delta with no visible support at all.
Yahweh went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them on their way, and by night in a pillar of fire Exodus 13:21.
The guidance is visible, continuous, and shaped to the hour: shade in a desert day, light in a desert night. It is the same fire that burned in a bush without consuming it and the same that will settle on the tabernacle at the end of the book. From here until the last verse of Exodus, the presence that Moses met alone on a mountain travels in front of a nation, and didn't depart from before the people Exodus 13:22.
settled What this mark means