Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Exodus · About this commentary
Trapped Against the Sea
Exodus 14:1-14
1 Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, · WEB
The camp is deliberately placed in an indefensible position, and the people's first reaction to danger is to prefer the slavery they were rescued from.
Speak to the children of Israel, that they turn back and encamp before Pihahiroth, between Migdol and the sea Exodus 14:2.
The order is to reverse direction and camp with water at their backs. It is militarily indefensible, it is meant to be, and the reason is given at once: Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, "They are entangled in the land. The wilderness has shut them in" Exodus 14:3. The position is bait, and the king reads it exactly as intended.
This is worth pausing on, because it settles a question that recurs whenever people in Scripture find themselves cornered. Israel is not in this trap through disobedience or bad navigation. They are there because they followed a cloud that led them into it. Being exactly where God has put you is no guarantee of a comfortable location.
The heart of Pharaoh and of his servants was changed toward the people, and they said, "What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?" Exodus 14:5.
The grief of the tenth plague lasts about a week. What replaces it is not repentance revisited but accounting: a workforce has been lost. Six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt Exodus 14:7 go out after them, and the man who buried his own son now risks his army to recover unpaid labor.
When Pharaoh came near, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them; and they were very afraid. The children of Israel cried out to Yahweh Exodus 14:10.
They pray, which is right, and then they turn on Moses, which is the first of many. Because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Exodus 14:11. It is a bitter joke — Egypt was famous for its tombs — and underneath it is the sentence that will be repeated in one form or another for forty years: it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness Exodus 14:12.
Six days earlier they had watched a nation destroyed on their behalf. The memory is worth nothing under pressure, and this is the consistent finding of the wilderness narratives: past deliverance does not automatically produce present confidence. What frightened people want is not evidence but relief, and slavery has one thing to recommend it, which is that it is familiar.
Don't be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of Yahweh, which he will work for you today... Yahweh will fight for you, and you shall be still Exodus 14:13–14.
The instruction is to do nothing, and it is the only occasion in the book where that is the instruction. It is given because there is nothing to do: an unarmed nation with a sea behind it cannot fight six hundred chariots, and any action available to them would be a form of panic. The command to be still is not a general principle of piety. It is fitted to a moment when the alternatives are surrender and flight, and both are worse than waiting. Within two verses the same people will be told to march.
settled What this mark means