Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Waters Divided
Exodus 14:15-31
15 Yahweh said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Speak to the children of Israel, that they go forward. · WEB
The sea opens for a people commanded to walk into it, and the army that follows discovers that the same road is not open to everyone.
Why do you cry to me? Speak to the children of Israel, that they go forward Exodus 14:15.
The reply comes to a man who has just told the people to stand still, and it reverses him. There is a time for waiting and it has lasted one night. Prayer is not rebuked as such; what is refused is prayer offered instead of the next step, when the next step has already been made clear.
Lift up your rod, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it Exodus 14:16. The same shepherd's staff from the wilderness of Midian, still the only equipment.
The angel of God, who went before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them... It came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel. There was the cloud and the darkness, yet it gave light by night Exodus 14:19–20.
The pillar changes station and becomes a rear guard, and the same object is dark on one side and bright on the other. It is one of the most compact pictures in Scripture of a single act of God experienced two ways: the identical presence that lights the road for one company blinds the other, and nothing has changed except which side of it a person stands on.
Yahweh caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided Exodus 14:21.
A mechanism is named — a wind, blowing all night — and it does not reduce the event. The wind arrives when the rod is raised, it opens a corridor rather than a mudflat, and the water stands a wall to them on their right hand and on their left Exodus 14:22. Ground that a nation with livestock and carts can cross is described as dry, not merely fordable. Attempts to relocate this at a shallow lake have to account for a returning tide that drowns a chariot corps in the same place.
The Egyptians follow, and the collapse comes in stages: confusion in the morning watch, then he took off their chariot wheels, and they drove them heavily Exodus 14:25. A chariot army is a machine for moving fast over flat ground, and it is destroyed by the surface it is standing on. Their own conclusion is the plainest statement of the book's thesis, spoken by the losing side: Yahweh fights for them against the Egyptians Exodus 14:25. Understanding it does not save them; they are already in the corridor.
The waters returned... There remained not so much as one of them Exodus 14:28.
The deliverance and the judgment are the same act. The road that carried Israel over drowns the army behind them, which is why this crossing is afterward used as an image of both salvation and death to the old life 1 Corinthians 10:1–2.
Israel saw the great work which Yahweh did to the Egyptians, and the people feared Yahweh; and they believed in Yahweh and in his servant Moses Exodus 14:31.
The belief is genuine and it is dated. Three days later they are complaining about water, which is not hypocrisy but the ordinary short life of faith founded on a spectacle.
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