Exodus 14:13

These verses come straight after the tenth plague and the hurried departure from Egypt (Exodus 12:29–30). God himself had told Moses to turn the people back and camp by the sea (Exodus 14:1–4). Pharaoh, regretting that he had let his labourers go, gathered his army and set out after them with six hundred chosen chariots and his horsemen (Exodus 14:5–9). The Israelites were a great company of former slaves, perhaps two million or more, unarmed, untrained for war and unorganized. Behind them came the strongest army of the day, and in front of them lay the sea, the Yam Suph, a name often translated “Sea of Reeds”. By every human reckoning they would be cut down or dragged back into slavery.

This is the turning point of Exodus 14. The LORD then opened the sea and destroyed the army that pursued his people (Exodus 14:15–31), and Israel sang of it in Exodus 15.

When Pharaoh drew near, “the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and, behold, the Egyptians marched after them”. The word “behold”, vehineh in Hebrew, marks the sudden shock of what they saw. “They were sore afraid” joins yârêʼ, the ordinary verb for fear, which elsewhere can also mean to revere, with mᵉʼôd, which simply means “very” or “greatly”. They were very much afraid, as anyone in their place would be.

Then “the children of Israel cried out unto the LORD.” The verb tsâʻaq means to cry out, to call for help in hardship. Their cry went to the LORD, Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of the God who had just brought them out of Egypt, and whatever came next, that first cry went to the right place. David prayed the same way: “In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple” (Psalm 18:6).

Their cry to God quickly became an accusation against Moses: “Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness?” Egypt was full of tombs, and the people knew it, so the question is sarcasm. The word for graves, qeber, means a grave, tomb or burying place. They were saying that if death was coming anyway, they would rather have died in Egypt and been buried there than perish in the wilderness, the midbar, a desolate and dangerous land far from the fertile Nile valley they had left. To die out there, away from home and proper burial, was counted a shameful and fearful end. The verb mûwth, “to die”, comes back in the next verse as well, because they had made up their minds that death was certain.

“Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt?” The verb behind “dealt”, ʻâsâh, is the broad word for doing or making anything at all, and the force of the accusation lies in the question itself: why did you do this to us? They speak as though the whole Exodus were Moses’ mistake, or even his malice, and in their panic they forget that God sent him, with signs and plagues, to do exactly this.

“Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians?” Here dâbâr means “word” or “speech”, the thing they had said. The verb in “Let us alone”, châdal, means to cease, leave off or let be. They claim they had asked Moses back in Egypt to stop and leave them where they were. Exodus records no such words from them before they left, and the claim reads like panic rewriting the past to say “we told you so”.

“For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.” The word ṭôwb is the broad Hebrew word for good, used here to compare two things: better. They set slavery and death side by side, and in their terror those two were all they could see. The third way, God’s deliverance, was about to open in front of them. The irony is deep, because people freshly set free from brutal slavery were wishing themselves back into it.

Moses answers the people’s panic with three commands and a promise, and he speaks for God. “Fear ye not” uses the same verb, yârêʼ, that described their terror in verse 10. Their danger was real, and Moses calls them to turn their eyes from the army to the God who is about to act.

“Stand still” translates yâtsab, here in the form hityatsvu, a verb that means to set oneself in place, to take one’s stand and stay there. The picture is of people standing firm and holding their ground, ready to watch what God will do. They are to stop running, stop complaining and stop trying to save themselves.

“And see the salvation of the LORD.” The word for salvation, yᵉshûwʻâh, means deliverance, help or victory. Scripture uses it even of rescue God brings through human hands, while tracing every rescue back to him, and this one is credited wholly to the LORD. A psalm says it in a single line: “Salvation belongeth unto the LORD” (Psalm 3:8). The deliverance at the sea was a physical escape from an army, and Scripture goes on to use the same language for the far greater salvation God brings in Christ.

“Which he will shew to you to day.” The words “to day” come twice in this verse, because the rescue Moses promises is near and certain, something they will watch with their own eyes. “For the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever.” This promise is final. The army they feared would be destroyed, and that threat would be gone for good.

Verse 14 is the heart of Moses’ answer. “The LORD shall fight for you” uses the covenant name, Yᵉhôvâh, the God who had made himself known to Israel and keeps his promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The verb lâcham is the ordinary word for fighting and making war. The LORD himself takes up the battle, and he takes it up “for you”. It was a battle far beyond Israel’s strength, and God took full charge of it. Pharaoh, whom Egypt honoured as a god-king, had come out in pride after the people, and the LORD himself would meet him.

“And ye shall hold your peace.” The verb chârash here means to be silent, to keep still. A verb with the same spelling means to engrave or plow, but the lexicons list it as a separate word, and here the sense is silence. Israel is to be quiet: to stop panicking, to stop complaining and to wait in trust while God works. The two halves of the verse belong together. God does the fighting, and his people rest in him.

The same promise was given again as Israel prepared to face new enemies: “Ye shall not fear them: for the LORD your God he shall fight for you” (Deuteronomy 3:22). The psalmist hears the call to quiet trust in “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10), and Paul carries the promise to every believer: “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31).

Pharaoh’s army, the sea and the cry of a trapped people point ahead to our deeper plight. We were held by sin and death and unable to escape by our own strength, and Jesus came to rescue us from a bondage far worse than Egypt. He said that “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin”, and “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:34–36). Paul speaks of being servants either of sin or of righteousness (Romans 6:16–17), and he says that God “hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Colossians 1:13–14).

The salvation Moses told Israel to see has a name. When Simeon saw the child Jesus he said, “For mine eyes have seen thy salvation” (Luke 2:30), and Peter preached, “Neither is there salvation in any other” (Acts 4:12). Jesus is the way to the Father (John 14:6), and he fought the battle that was beyond us. On the cross he triumphed over principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15), he appeared “to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26), and through death he destroyed “him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). So Paul can ask, “O death, where is thy sting?” and give thanks to God, “which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:54–57). The Egyptians whom Israel saw no more for ever point to enemies whose final defeat Christ has made certain. God made a way through the waters for Israel, and in baptism we are buried with Christ into death and raised with him to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3–4).

Where Israel grumbled in the wilderness, Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted and stood firm, trusting his Father (Matthew 4:1–11). He “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8), offering prayers “with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death” (Hebrews 5:7–9). In Gethsemane his anguish was so great that his sweat was “as it were great drops of blood” (Luke 22:44), and still he gave himself to the Father’s will. He knows what it is to be sore afraid, and he tells us to cast all our care on him, “for he careth for you” (1 Peter 5:7), and to be of good cheer because he has overcome the world (John 16:33). He is “the resurrection, and the life” (John 11:25–26), and he leads his people to resurrection life and an eternal inheritance in place of a grave in the wilderness.

Jesus’ own “fear not” echoes Moses. He told his disciples to “fear not them which kill the body” (Matthew 10:28), and he gives the rest that “stand still” points toward: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). We hold our peace before his finished work, trusting his victory for our salvation. “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you,” he said (John 14:27), and Paul says, “he is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14). The LORD heard Israel’s cry by the sea, and whoever confesses with the mouth that Jesus is Lord and believes in the heart that God raised him from the dead is saved (Romans 10:9–10). Set free, we are told, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” (Galatians 5:1), and we go forward with his promise, “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20).

You may come to a place like Israel’s, with trouble pressing behind you and the road ahead closed. Fear in that place is natural, and these verses show where to take it: to the LORD, in a cry for help, before it hardens into complaint against the people around you. Israel’s trouble came from forgetting, so it helps to remember aloud what God has already done for you. Then comes the harder part, which is to stop striving in panic and stand firm, doing what God gives you to do and leaving the battle with him. The God who opened the sea still fights for his people, and the salvation he showed Israel “to day” he has shown to us in Christ once for all.