Exodus 14:1

Israel has just left Egypt after the tenth plague and has travelled from Succoth to Etham, with the LORD going before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night (Exodus 13:20–22). Up to this point his guidance has been general. Here it becomes a specific order, and everything that follows at the sea rests on it. Pharaoh’s pursuit, the crossing and the end of the Egyptian army all come from what God says in these verses. That is why so short a verse matters so much: it tells us at the outset that God is the one acting, and that Moses and Israel are following his plan.

The name printed “the LORD” is Yᵉhôvâh, God’s personal covenant name. It is tied to the Hebrew verb “to be”, hayah, and speaks of him as the self-existent and eternal One. This is the God who made promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and he is now keeping them. The verb “spake”, dâbar, is a common Hebrew word for speaking and telling, and its weight here comes from the one who speaks. The same verb returns in verse 2, where Moses is told to “speak” to the people, so the word passes from God to Moses and from Moses to Israel.

Moses’ name, Môsheh, comes from a verb meaning to draw out, and he was given it because he was drawn out of the water (Exodus 2:10). He is the one God chose to carry his word to the whole nation, and God spoke with him openly and plainly (Numbers 12:8). The words “And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying” return again and again through the books of Moses, and each time they mark what follows as God’s own instruction. God later promised to raise up a prophet like Moses and to put his words in that prophet’s mouth (Deuteronomy 18:18).

The command has two verbs. To “turn”, shûwb, means to turn back or return, so Israel is to reverse its line of march. To “encamp”, chânâh, means to pitch a tent, so this is a settled halt and Israel will be found sitting still. The command to encamp is given and then repeated at the end of the verse, and the place is fixed by landmarks on every side. Pihahiroth, Pîy ha-Chîyrôth, has been explained as “mouth of the gorges” or “place of canals”, and either meaning suggests a narrow, confined spot. Migdol means “tower” and was probably a fortified outpost on Egypt’s eastern frontier. The sea lies on the other side.

To a soldier this is the worst ground that could be chosen. Israel is a vast company of freed slaves, perhaps numbering in the millions, with women, children and livestock, and it is being walked into a corner with water in front and an Egyptian fort nearby. God chose the place for exactly that reason. He had already led them away from the direct road and by a longer way, and now he sets them where only he can bring them out. His thoughts and his ways are higher than ours, as the heavens are higher than the earth (Isaiah 55:8–9), and “our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased” (Psalm 115:3).

The place serves two purposes. It draws Pharaoh out for a last and decisive defeat, as verses 3 and 4 go on to say. It also teaches Israel to rely on God’s power, since their own strength and their own sense of direction can do them no good here. Scripture is honest about how hard that lesson was. When the Egyptian army came into view, the people were terrified and complained bitterly to Moses, even saying they would have been better off as slaves (Exodus 14:10–12). They already had good reason to trust him, having seen ten plagues and having the pillar of cloud and fire with them every day and night. God delivered them all the same, and that deliverance became the event Israel looked back to ever after.

God tells Moses what Pharaoh will think before Pharaoh has thought it. Pharaoh’s verdict comes in two parts. “They are entangled in the land” uses bûwk, which means to be perplexed or confused, like people who have lost their way. “The wilderness hath shut them in” uses midbâr, the word for wilderness or desert, and çâgar, which means to shut, to close or to shut in. Pharaoh will look at the desert and the sea and see a prison whose door has closed, with a leaderless crowd wandering inside it.

It is easy to see why he would act on that. Israel had been in Egypt for over four hundred years and was released only after the death of the firstborn (Exodus 12, Exodus 13). Losing so large a workforce was a heavy loss to Egypt and a humiliation to a king whose standing depended on his power. A slave nation camped helplessly by the sea would look to him like the chance to take back what he counted as his own. So he reads God’s leading as Israel’s blunder. Moses knows, and we know, that Israel stands exactly where God placed it, and that the one walking into a trap is Pharaoh. The pursuit follows just as God said it would (Exodus 14:5–9).

The wilderness that Pharaoh counts as Israel’s prison becomes, in the chapters that follow, the place where God tests his people, provides for them and teaches them to depend on him.

The verb is châzaq, which means to make strong, to strengthen, to make firm and so to harden. In Hebrew thought the heart, levav, is the seat of a person’s mind, will and feelings, the place where decisions are made. God is saying that he will make Pharaoh’s resolve firm, so that he follows Israel to the sea.

This is the end of a long history. God said before the plagues began that he would harden Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 4:21, Exodus 7:3). Through the plagues Scripture also says, again and again, that Pharaoh hardened his own heart (Exodus 8:15, Exodus 8:32, Exodus 9:34). Both are true, and Exodus tells us both. Egypt revered its king as a living god, so the LORD’s hold on Pharaoh’s heart is itself a statement that he rules the ruler. Paul takes up God’s word to Pharaoh in Exodus 9:16, that he was raised up so that God might show his power in him and his name be declared in all the earth (Romans 9:17).

God names the purpose of the whole event. “I will be honoured” is the verb kâbad, whose first meaning is to be heavy, and from that come the ideas of weight, honour and glory. God will show his greatness in a way that carries weight with everyone who sees it. He will do it “upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host”. The word for host, chayil, means strength, ability, wealth or an army, and here it is Egypt’s army, the chariots, horsemen and soldiers of the strongest power of that day.

To “know”, yâdaʻ, is here a knowledge that comes from seeing what God does. The Egyptians will be brought to acknowledge who the LORD is by what happens in front of them. That is a different thing from saving faith, and for many of them it meant fear. The nations measured a god by his deeds, and by ruling the plagues, the sea and the army the LORD showed himself to be the only true God. “I am the LORD” is a refrain that runs through Exodus, and the prophets hear it too: “I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me” (Isaiah 45:5–6).

Judgment on the oppressor and rescue for God’s people come together here, as they do across Scripture, from the flood (Genesis 7) to the judgments of the last days (Revelation 19). God did what he said. He divided the sea, brought Israel through on dry ground and returned the waters on the Egyptians (Exodus 14:21–31). Israel sang about it on the far shore (Exodus 15) and went on to Sinai, where God gave his law (Exodus 19–24). Later generations kept singing of the waters that saw God and were afraid (Psalm 77:16–20), and Isaiah names the LORD as the one who makes a way in the sea and a path in the mighty waters (Isaiah 43:16–17).

The passage closes with “And they did so.” Israel turned and camped where God had said.

The rescue at the sea is a pattern of the greater rescue God has given in his Son. Israel stood with the sea in front and an army behind and had no means of escape. We were held in the same way by sin and death, whose wages we had earned, and God gave eternal life as a gift through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 6:23). He has delivered us from the power of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his Son, in whom we have redemption (Colossians 1:13–14), and has made us free from sin (Romans 6:22). Jesus is himself the way through, as he said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

Paul connects the crossing with baptism. He says our fathers “were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Corinthians 10:1–2), and that we who were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death, to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3–4). On the mount of transfiguration Moses and Elijah spoke with Jesus about his departure, and the Greek word there is exodos (Luke 9:30–31).

The hardening of Pharaoh has its counterpart at the cross. Wicked men crucified Jesus by their own will, and yet he was delivered up by the settled plan and foreknowledge of God (Acts 2:23). God used hardened hearts to bring about salvation. As the LORD triumphed over Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt, Christ triumphed over the powers that held us, disarming them and making an open show of them (Colossians 2:13–15). God’s honour is the aim there as well. As his hour came Jesus prayed, “Father, glorify thy name” (John 12:27–28). At the sea God was honoured in judgment on a king, and at the cross he is honoured in self-giving love, where his strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

These verses let us see behind a frightening scene before it happens. Israel, standing on the shore, saw water ahead and chariots behind. God had already told Moses where the camp would be, what Pharaoh would think and how it would end. The place that looked like the end of Israel was the place God had chosen to save them.

That is who God is toward his people still. He leads with full knowledge of what lies ahead, including the plans of those who oppose him, and he is able to turn their opposition to his own glory and his people’s good. A path that looks shut in to us may be one he has chosen, and our weakness in it is where his strength is shown. David, who knew what it was to be hemmed in, called the LORD his rock, his fortress and his deliverer (Psalm 18:2).

The passage also tells us what God is aiming at in all he does, which is that he be known as the LORD. Our troubles and the wider troubles of the world lie inside that purpose, and it is a purpose he has never failed to carry out.