Exodus 14 Footnotes

14:16 Did the Israelites pass through a marsh—a “sea of reeds”—and not the Red Sea? Many scholars have accepted this suggestion, but a full consideration of the biblical evidence leads to the conclusion that Israel escaped the armies of Pharaoh by passing through a large and dangerous body of water. The biblical text states that the waters were deep (Is 63:13) but that God split them and made them stand “like a wall” (Ps 78:13) on either side of the fleeing Israelites (Ex 14:22,29). When the waters returned to their original position, they covered the Egyptians’ chariots, horses, and soldiers (v. 27; 15:1; Dt 11:4; Jos 24:7; Neh 9:11; Ps 78:53), thereby killing all the enemy (Ex 14:27-28,30; Ps 106:11). In the NT, Stephen, the apostle Paul, and the writer of Hebrews referred to the body of water as a sea (Ac 7:36; 1Co 10:1; Heb 11:29).

Commentators have noted that the Hebrew phrase yam suph, traditionally translated as “Red Sea,” can also mean “sea of reed.” While that translation is possible, the OT always employs this phrase to refer to a deep body of water east of Egypt and adjacent to the Sinai Peninsula. In 1Kg 9:26-28 Solomon is said to have built a fleet of trading ships that sailed on the Red Sea to the land of Ophir. Both the NT and the Septuagint translate yam suph as “Red Sea” (Ac 7:36; Heb 11:29) and not “sea of reeds,” or a marsh.

14:21 How could a dry path be created through the middle of the Red Sea? God performed a miracle, using, at least in part, the forces of nature. The biblical writer mentions the role of wind in this event, but that does not preclude the possibility that God used other aspects of nature of which we have no knowledge. The suggestion that a tsunami was responsible for the temporary displacement of water in the Red Sea area is interesting but does not account for the description of a “wall” of water on either side of the fleeing Israelites (vv. 22, 29). Possibly God augmented the forces of nature with supernatural activity to create a safe passage for Israel through the body of water.

14:25 Some scholars have suggested that most of the exodus narrative is fabricated, though it may contain kernels of historical truth. They reject the Bible’s claim that the Red Sea actually parted but accept the possibility that Egyptian chariots became mired in the muddy marshlands in pursuit of escaping Asiatic slaves, allowing them to escape.

Certainly the Bible indicates that the Egyptians had trouble with their chariots, but this is not portrayed as the primary reason the Israelites’ escape succeeded. Nine different books in the Bible (Ex, Dt, Jos, Ps, Is, Ac, 1Co, Heb) explicitly affirm, or clearly assume, that the Red Sea split apart, saving Israel but destroying their pursuers. Any approach to the Bible that selectively rejects the straightforward narrative in Exodus in order to produce a naturalistic explanation of events will create more problems than it solves. Such an approach requires one to assume that the writers of eight other books in the Bible got it wrong. It reflects unwarranted pride, crediting modern readers of the Bible with a better grasp of biblical events than those who witnessed and wrote about those events.