Exodus 14:16

These verses stand at the climax of the escape from Egypt told in Exodus 14. After the tenth plague Pharaoh let Israel go (Exodus 12:29–32), then came after them with his chariots and horsemen. His army overtook them camped by the sea, and the people cried out in terror and complained bitterly to Moses, wishing themselves back in Egypt as slaves (Exodus 14:9–12). Moses told them that the LORD would fight for them and that they need only be still (Exodus 14:13–14), and then he cried to the LORD himself.

The verb for crying, tsâʻaq, is the ordinary word for crying out or calling for help in hardship, and elsewhere it can mean calling people together. God’s question, “Wherefore criest thou unto me?”, tells us that Moses had been crying out to him at the edge of the sea. God already knows the reason. He asks in order to turn Moses from pleading to the work he has ready for him, and his very next words give that work.

The one who speaks is Yᵉhôvâh, the LORD, the covenant name of the God who has made himself known to Israel and keeps his promises. He has already planned the way through the sea, and he answers Moses’ cry by telling him what to do.

Moses is first to speak to the whole people. The verb dâbar means to speak or tell, and here Moses takes up again his place as the one who passes God’s word to Israel. The command is for every family in the camp, and the whole people must answer it together.

What Moses is to tell them is “that they go forward”. The verb nâçaʻ properly means to pull up the tent pegs, and so to break camp and set out on a journey. Israel is to strike its tents and march, and the only way ahead is the sea. God gives this command in verse 15, before he tells Moses in verse 16 how the sea will open. Moses had told the people to stand still and see the LORD fight for them, and now God tells them to walk. Both are true together, because the LORD does the fighting and his people walk on the path he opens.

The people who receive this command had just wished themselves back in Egypt (Exodus 14:10–12). They were newly freed slaves, untrained for war, with the strongest army of the day behind them, and marching toward the sea would have looked unthinkable to them. God called them to trust him and move toward the very thing that trapped them, and he turned that obstacle into their road. Isaiah later praises the LORD who makes a way in the sea and a path in the mighty waters, and who promises a new way in the wilderness (Isaiah 43:16–19).

Verse 16 opens with “But”, turning from Moses’ crying to what he is to do. God gives him three things: lift up his rod, stretch out his hand over the sea, and divide it.

The rod, maṭṭeh, is a staff or rod. Moses’ rod had already become a serpent (Exodus 4:2–4), and in the plagues a rod stretched out over the waters of Egypt had turned them to blood and brought up the frogs (Exodus 7:19, 8:5). By now the rod stood for the authority God had given and was the visible means by which his power was shown. When Moses lifts it over the sea, the miracle is wholly God’s, and God chooses to do it through his servant’s obedient hand.

People ask why Moses needed to lift the rod at all if God was doing the miracle. God is free to act alone, and he chooses to draw his servants into his saving work. Moses’ lifted rod was a public act of faith and obedience, a sign before all Israel that what followed was God’s work done through the man he had chosen, and it confirmed Moses as their leader.

The verb for divide, bâqaʻ, means to split, cleave or break open. The same word is used for God splitting the rocks in the wilderness (Psalm 78:15). The God who commands the waters here is the God who ordered the waters at the beginning (Genesis 1), and the sea gives way at his word.

The people will go “on dry ground through the midst of the sea”. The word yabbâshâh means dry land, and the path runs right through the middle of the sea on ground firm enough for a great multitude, with their children and their livestock, to cross safely. A psalm sings that God’s way was in the sea and his path in the great waters (Psalm 77:19). Moses did as he was told, Israel crossed, and the waters returned over the Egyptian army (Exodus 14:26–28). The whole account fills Exodus 14:21–31.

Verse 17 opens with emphasis: “And I, behold, I”. God himself will act, by his own purpose. The verb for harden, châzaq, means to make strong or firm, to strengthen or harden. God makes the Egyptians firm in the course they have already chosen, so that they follow Israel into the sea, where he will judge them.

The hardening has a long history in Exodus. Before the plagues began, God told Moses that he would harden Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 7:3). Pharaoh also hardened his own heart again and again, as he did after the frogs were taken away (Exodus 8:15). Even after letting Israel go, he set out after them once more and overtook them by the sea (Exodus 14:9–10). Here the hardening reaches past Pharaoh to “the hearts of the Egyptians”, his whole army.

The Egyptians think they are using their great strength to take back their slaves. God has already said that their pursuit will bring him honour and bring them to ruin, so the strength they trust becomes the means of their fall.

The second half of verse 17 gives God’s purpose. The verb behind “get me honour”, kâbad, means to be heavy or weighty, and so to be honoured or glorious. God will make his own weight and glory plain over Pharaoh and all his host. The word for host, chayil, means strength, ability, wealth or an army, and here it is Pharaoh’s army. The list moves from the king to his army and then to its chariots and horsemen, so that every part of Egypt’s might is named.

Egypt was the great power of its age, and its chariots were the finest fighting force of the day. Pharaoh was revered as a living god. So God’s victory at the sea was over Egypt’s pride and its gods as much as over its soldiers. God had told Pharaoh that he raised him up to show his power in him, and that his name might be declared throughout all the earth (Exodus 9:16). A psalm later recalls his wonders in Egypt and at the sea (Psalm 78:12–16).

Verse 18 gives the result. The verb yâdaʻ, “know”, here means a knowing that comes by experience. The Egyptians will learn who the LORD is from what he does to them at the sea. The plagues had already shown his power, and Pharaoh and his people had refused to own it. At the sea they would come to a knowledge forced on them, terrible and unwilling.

“I am the LORD” is God’s own statement of who he is, heard again and again in Exodus. Yᵉhôvâh is his personal covenant name, tied to the verb “to be”, and it speaks of his eternal being and his faithfulness. The list from verse 17 comes back with Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen, so that Egypt’s knowledge of the LORD is bound to the overthrow of the very things it trusted. A psalm carries the same call to the whole earth: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

The New Testament reads the sea in the light of Christ. Paul says that Israel was baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea (1 Corinthians 10:1–2). Christian baptism joins a believer to Christ’s death and resurrection, so that we rise to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3–4). Israel passed through the waters into a new freedom, and believers pass through baptism into a new life among God’s people.

The sea set Israel free from slavery and death under Pharaoh, and Christ sets his people free from sin, death and the power of the devil. Luke speaks of the decease Jesus “should accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31), and his death and resurrection are a new exodus that leads his people into the kingdom of God. He is the way to the Father (John 14:6), and his call, “Follow me” (Matthew 4:19), asks the same trust that Israel showed in going forward into the unknown. All power in heaven and in earth is his (Matthew 28:18), and he showed his rule over the sea itself when he rebuked the winds and the waves (Matthew 8:26–27). He is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep and leads them home (John 10:11).

God got him honour over Pharaoh by judging Egypt’s army in the sea. At the cross he won his greatest honour, as Christ triumphed over the principalities and powers that held us captive (Colossians 2:15). Hearts were hardened against Christ, and God turned their rejection into the means of salvation. Paul speaks in the same way of a hardening in part that has come upon Israel, in God’s purpose to show mercy to the Gentiles and so to all (Romans 11:25–32).

The Egyptians knew the LORD only as their judge, and against their will. In Christ, “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3), God makes himself known fully and kindly, as the Father who so loved the world that he gave his only Son (John 3:16). At the sea God’s glory was shown chiefly in judgment, and at the cross his justice and his love meet.

At the edge of the sea the LORD hears Moses’ cry and answers it with a command and a promise. He asks his people to move toward what frightens them, and he has the path ready before their feet touch it. He works through a lifted rod and an outstretched hand, and the power is all his. He rules even the hearts of his enemies and turns their pride into the means of their fall. And he does it all so that his name is known, by the people he saves and by those who set themselves against him.

The same God has made a way for his people in Christ, through death and into life. When you are hemmed in and crying to him, these verses show that he already knows the way through, and that his word to his people is to go forward with him.