Exodus 14:26

Verse 21 comes at Israel’s most desperate moment. When the people saw Pharaoh’s army behind them, they cried out in fear, questioned why Moses had brought them out, and wished they had stayed as slaves in Egypt (Exodus 14:10–12). Moses answered them, “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD,” and promised, “The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace” (Exodus 14:13–14). Then the pillar of cloud and fire moved and stood between the two camps, giving light to Israel and darkness to the Egyptians, and it kept the army away all that night (Exodus 14:19–20).

Moses stretched out his hand over the sea because God had told him to (Exodus 14:16). The verb, nâṭâh, means to stretch or spread out, to extend or incline, and the act itself was simple obedience. The power was the LORD’s, and Moses was the servant through whom he chose to show it. The verse says so in its own order: Moses stretched out his hand, “and the LORD caused the sea to go back.”

The LORD worked through “a strong east wind all that night.” The wind blew for hours, and through the whole night God was steadily opening the road his people would walk. The verse then gives the result twice. He “made the sea dry land”, and the word for dry land, chârâbâh, means dry ground and is used elsewhere for a desert. “And the waters were divided”: the verb bâqaʻ means to split, cleave or break open. It is the verb used when the ground split open beneath Korah and his company (Numbers 16:31), and it is used for splitting wood. The sea was split in two, and the next verse shows the water standing on either side of the road.

In verse 22 the people step forward. “Went into the midst of the sea” uses bôwʼ, the ordinary verb to go or come, and here it describes a whole nation walking into the middle of the sea along the road God had opened. Taking that step was faith, as Hebrews says: “By faith they passed through the Red sea as by dry land: which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned” (Hebrews 11:29).

“Upon the dry ground” uses yabbâshâh, the usual word for dry land as set against water. Verse 21’s “dry land” and this verse’s “dry ground” share the English word “dry” and stand for two different Hebrew words, chârâbâh and yabbâshâh, and both tell us the same thing about the seabed.

“The waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.” The word for wall, chôwmâh, usually means the wall of a city, a defensive rampart. The sea that had shut Israel in now stood upright like the ramparts of a fortified town, marking out their road and guarding it on both sides.

The scene recalls the creation, when God gathered the waters into one place and the dry land appeared (Genesis 1:9–10). Here he again makes dry ground in the midst of the waters, and the people who walk across it begin anew as a nation he has redeemed for himself.

Verse 23 brings the army onto the same road. “The Egyptians pursued” uses râdaph, to run after, pursue or chase, usually with hostile intent. They “went in after them to the midst of the sea”, where tâvek means the midst, middle or inside, so the army went all the way into the open seabed after Israel. “Even all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen” names the whole strength of Egypt’s army. The word pârâsh means a horseman, a soldier riding a horse, and the chariots were the most feared weapon of the age, swift and destructive on open ground. The word “all” shows that Pharaoh committed every part of that strength to the chase.

Egypt was the great power of its day, and Pharaoh was honoured as a divine king. Sending his chariots after a people of former slaves into a sea that God had opened, after ten plagues had already broken his land, was pride defying the LORD to his face. The road God had opened for Israel’s salvation became the trap in which their pursuers perished (Exodus 14:24–28). Isaiah speaks of this same God, who “maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters; Which bringeth forth the chariot and horse, the army and the power; they shall lie down together, they shall not rise: they are extinct, they are quenched as tow” (Isaiah 43:16–17). The psalm says, “The LORD bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect. The counsel of the LORD standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations” (Psalm 33:10–11).

The news of this night spread. In Jericho, Rahab told Israel’s spies that her people had heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before Israel (Joshua 2:10).

Verse 24 marks the moment the LORD turns from guiding Israel to striking their enemies. The morning watch, in Hebrew ʼashmōret habbōqer, was the last watch of the night, roughly from two until six in the morning, just before dawn. The word for morning, bôqer, is traced to the breaking through of daylight. Just when the Egyptians might have expected to close on Israel at first light, the LORD acted, and his timing turned their expected triumph into their downfall.

“The LORD looked unto the host of the Egyptians.” The verb shāqaph means to look out or look down, as someone leans out of a window. Scripture describes God in human terms here so that we can picture his whole attention resting on the army, and his look is the first step of his action against it.

He looked “through the pillar of fire and of the cloud.” This pillar had gone before Israel by day and by night since they left Egypt (Exodus 13:21), and that night it had stood between the camps (Exodus 14:20), light for Israel and darkness for Egypt. Now the same presence that guided and sheltered God’s people became the place from which he moved against their enemies.

“And troubled the host of the Egyptians.” The verb hāmam means to put in commotion, to disturb, to throw into confusion. The strongest army in the world lost its order and its nerve together.

Verse 25 tells how God brought the chase to a stop. “And took off their chariot wheels”: the verb çûyr means to turn off, remove or withdraw. The KJV reads that the wheels came off. The verb is broad enough that the wheels may instead have been made to bind, clog or sink in the ground until they stopped turning, and the text leaves the mechanism open. What it makes clear is the result, “that they drave them heavily”. The word kᵉbêduth means difficulty, and in this idiom “heavily”, so the chariots were driven with great difficulty, slow and almost impossible to steer. The weapon Egypt trusted most became its snare.

“So that the Egyptians said, Let us flee from the face of Israel.” The army that had come to recapture its slaves now tried to run from them, and a defenceless people put Egypt’s chariots to flight without lifting a hand.

“For the LORD fighteth for them against the Egyptians.” The verb lâcham means to fight or make war, and the Egyptians’ words describe a real battle with the LORD himself as Israel’s warrior. They are confessing exactly what Moses had promised that same night: “The LORD shall fight for you” (Exodus 14:14). Their confession came out of terror, and it fulfilled what God had said, that the Egyptians would know that he is the LORD (Exodus 14:4). Moses later told Israel again that the LORD their God would fight for them (Deuteronomy 3:22), and in a later war Judah heard the same truth: “the battle is not yours, but God’s” (2 Chronicles 20:15).

In verse 26 God speaks, and the second half of the miracle begins. “And the LORD said unto Moses”: the name is Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of the eternal God who binds himself to his people, and the command comes with all his authority. The army’s end is his decision.

“Stretch out thine hand over the sea” uses the same verb as verse 21, nâṭâh. All through Exodus, Moses’ outstretched hand comes just before God shows his power, in the plagues and now twice at the sea. The power in it was God’s, working through a servant who obeyed, and the gesture that opened the sea now closes it.

“That the waters may come again upon the Egyptians.” The verb shûwb means to return, so the waters (mayim) go back to where they had been, and the sea that had been a road for Israel becomes the instrument of judgment on their oppressors. “Upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen” names the very forces that made Pharaoh strong and kept Israel in bondage. God had raised Pharaoh up to show his power in him (Exodus 9:16), and now that power would fall on Pharaoh’s whole army.

The crossing of the sea became the event Israel looked back to as the proof of God’s saving power. Psalm 77 recalls it: “Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known. Thou leddest thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron” (Psalm 77:16–20). Another psalm says, “He divided the sea, and caused them to pass through; and he made the waters to stand as an heap” (Psalm 78:13), and another tells how he rebuked the Red Sea and it dried up, and the waters covered their enemies (Psalm 106:9–11). Isaiah draws on it to promise something new. After calling God the one who makes a way in the sea, he says, “Behold, I will do a new thing ... I will even make a way in the wilderness” (Isaiah 43:18–19).

Paul ties the crossing to Christian baptism: “all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Corinthians 10:1–2). Israel passed through the water from slavery into a new life as God’s covenant people. In the same way believers are buried with Christ by baptism into his death and raised to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3–4).

The dry road through the sea is a picture of Christ, who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). He is the one way God has provided across the gulf of sin, and through him we pass from the old order into a new creation: “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Corinthians 5:17), as dry ground came out of the waters at the beginning.

The defeat of Pharaoh’s army looks ahead to Christ’s victory over sin, death and the devil. God “hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Colossians 1:13–14). At the cross Christ “spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15), and by his death he destroyed the one who had the power of death and set free those held in bondage by the fear of it (Hebrews 2:14–15). The waters that fell in judgment on the Egyptians also point to the judgment Christ bore on the cross for his people, so that “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1–3). The road that saved Israel destroyed those who set themselves against God, and the Gospel speaks as plainly: the one who believes in the Son escapes condemnation, and the one who refuses to believe stands condemned already (John 3:18).

At the sea, Moses stretched out his hand while the LORD sent a wind all night. Jesus rose in the boat, rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace, be still,” and there was a great calm (Mark 4:39), showing in his own person the authority over creation that belongs to God. The pillar of God’s presence finds its fulfilment in him too. He is Immanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23), and the light of the world (John 8:12). The Egyptians confessed the LORD’s power in terror, and in Christ that confession will one day be made by all: “every knee should bow ... And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10–11).

These six verses give us a God who keeps the promises he made to Abraham, who sees the enemies of his people, and who makes a road where his people had only water before them. He gave Israel a way through the sea before he asked them to walk it, and he fought their battle while they stood still, just as Moses had said he would. The same call to quiet trust while God acts sounds again in the psalm, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10), and in Isaiah’s word, “in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15).

The passage shows God’s justice as clearly as his mercy. The night that saved Israel ended the army that had enslaved them, and the proudest power on earth confessed that the LORD fights for his people. He is the same God now, and his word to his people still holds: “Fear thou not; for I am with thee” (Isaiah 41:10). The God who parted the sea and closed it again over Pharaoh’s chariots is the God who in Christ has opened the way to himself and conquered every enemy that held us.