Exodus - Lesson 14

Dr. Carmen Imes 
Exodus 
OT605-14 
Sea of Reeds 
Lesson Transcript

All right, it's finally time to cross the Red Sea. You have probably noticed throughout the sessions that I've done so far that I have not been calling it the Red Sea. I've been consistently calling it the Sea of Reeds.

Why is that? Well, the Hebrew text never calls it the Red Sea, it's always the Sea of Reeds, and so I'm just sticking with how the Hebrew Bible describes it. Our English translations all say Red Sea because of a long tradition of translating it that way, so I'll talk in a moment about why. But the reason why I like to preserve Sea of Reeds is because of the symmetry that it creates with Moses having been placed among the reeds as a baby, and I want us to keep in mind the rescue of Moses and how it mirrors the rescue of the whole nation of Israel.

So that's why I've been sticking with Sea of Reeds. The Hebrew is Yam Suph, and in the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew, they rendered it Eruthron Thalasson, which is Red Sea, and so it goes all the way back to before the time of Jesus that this is called or referred to as the Red Sea. So both of the gulfs, both gulfs around the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba were known as Yam Suph or Sea of Reeds, and we don't have it.

This is not the case now, but in ancient times there was a chain of lakes above the Gulf of Suez. Now we have the Suez Canal that connects the Gulf of Suez with the Mediterranean Sea, so it's all water, but in ancient times there was a chain of lakes that varied in water level and you could pass between them on land in that region, but it's possible that this is a reference to one of those lakes, which is somewhat continuous with the Gulf of Suez. Some scholars think that it became known as the Red Sea because each of the cardinal directions, north, south, east, and west, was associated with a color.

So you can think of the Black Sea, which is north of Israel, the Red Sea is south of Israel, so it's possible that that's why we picked up the word red along the way. The first mention of the Sea of Reeds is in chapter 10, verse 19, but then we hear of it multiple times throughout these narratives, and 1 Kings 9.26 refers to Yom Suf, the Sea of Reeds, with reference to the city of Ezion-Geber, which is on the Gulf of Aqaba, all the way across the Sinai Peninsula. So we know that all the way back in the time of Solomon that both branches of these bodies of water around the Sinai Peninsula were thought of as the Sea of Reeds.

So from time to time people try to make the case for a different location of Mount Sinai, arguing that maybe they actually crossed the Gulf of Aqaba into Midian, or what is now Saudi Arabia, and that the location of Mount Sinai is there. I haven't been persuaded by that, but it's at least plausible, literarily, that they crossed this other body of water. It seems to me that it's much too far a journey away from Goshen for Pharaoh to have chased them all that way.

It seems like he's chasing them when they're still very local in the neighborhood. So as I mentioned, the Hebrew name Sea of Reeds makes a connection with the deliberate story of Moses, who was among the Reeds, but also whose name meant or means one who draws out. So we talked about how it was the daughter of Pharaoh who drew Moses out of the Reeds, but now he's the one drawing the people out across the Sea of Reeds into freedom.

So now just as he passed through the Reeds to escape death by Pharaoh's hand, now the Israelites are passing through the Sea of Reeds to escape death by Pharaoh's hand. It seemed like when we were talking about the death of the firstborn, like that was the ultimate climax, that the story was finished, that Pharaoh had finally been defeated. But as long as Pharaoh is alive, there's a possibility that he will change his mind.

And so we have a surprising reprise to the conflict between Pharaoh and Yahweh after he's told them they can leave and they have left. So we're going to pick up the story at the end of chapter 13 and just see how this plays out. So we're picking it up right after the legislation or ritual instruction texts about the dedication of the firstborn of the Israelites to Yahweh, picking it up in chapter 13 verse 17.

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. They could have just left Egypt and followed the coast of the Mediterranean Sea up into Canaan. It would have been a very direct route.

But God said if they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt. So God led the people around by the desert toward the Sea of Reeds. The Israelites went up out of Egypt ready for battle.

They're armed or they are organized in groups of military units. It's not entirely clear how that Hebrew word should be translated, ready for battle. But it's interesting how God is compassionate on his people, how he's leading them in a way that he knows that they're going to be able to develop dependence on him and develop trust in him as they pass through the wilderness.

We know now because of the work of archaeologists that that entire route along the Mediterranean Sea up into Canaan was punctuated by Egyptian forts and so that route was heavily fortified because there was a lot of trade and travel that came that way. And so if the Israelites had just taken that shortcut, they would have been facing an Egyptian army every few miles all the way into Canaan. So God takes them instead out across the Sinai Peninsula.

1319 says, Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the Israelites swear an oath. He had said, God will surely come to your aid and then you must carry my bones up with you from this place. So we talked about this when we were looking at Egypt in Genesis and the importance to both Jacob and Joseph of being buried in the promised land.

They were not staking their hopes on Egypt. They knew that God had made their ancestors a promise, them and their ancestors a promise, and they wanted to fully participate in that promise even if they were dead. And so they take the bones along with them.

After leaving Sukkoth, they camped at Etham on the edge of the desert. By day Yahweh went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light so they could travel by day or by night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.

And what a wonderful gift that would be traveling through an inhospitable and hot wilderness that they could travel at night and rest during the day, put up their tents for shade and sleep through the hottest part of the day and then travel at night when it's cooler and less intense. Chapter 14 begins with a surprising instruction from God. Then Yahweh said to Moses, tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp near Pi-Ha-Heroth between Migdal and the sea.

There to encamp by the sea directly opposite Baal-Zephon. Pharaoh will think the Israelites are wandering around the land in confusion hemmed in by the desert. And I will harden Pharaoh's heart and he will pursue them.

So this is the chazak. I will make firm or make resolute Pharaoh's heart and he will pursue them. But I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army and the Egyptians will know that I am Yahweh.

So the Israelites did this. So Pharaoh quickly is going to forget how distressed he was by the presence of the Hebrews and by the work of Yahweh. And he's going to think, what was I thinking? Verse five tells us his thought pattern here.

When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds about them and said, what have we done? We've let the Israelites go and lost their services. They're worried about the labor they lost. They're still greedy for what others can do for them by force.

So he had his chariot made ready and took his army with him. He took 600 of the best chariots along with all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them. And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, so that he pursued the Israelites who were marching out boldly.

They had permission to go after all, and they had wealth from their neighbors and they were excited. The Egyptians, all Pharaoh's horses and chariots, horsemen and troops pursued the Israelites and overtook them as they camped by the sea near Pi-Ha-Heroth opposite Baal-Zaphon. I've often wondered what's going on with this scene.

Why does God feel that it's necessary for one more showdown with Pharaoh? Why make his heart resolute and have this one more encounter? And really it seems to me like if you were leaving Egypt as a people with Pharaoh's permission and crossing out, setting out across the desert, wouldn't you always wonder if Pharaoh would change his mind and come after you? And wouldn't you always be checking behind your shoulder to make sure that you weren't being followed? And what happens with the crossing of the sea is such a decisive victory over the army of Pharaoh that they will never have to worry about being re-enslaved again by Pharaoh and his army. As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up and there were the Egyptians marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to Yahweh.

They said to Moses, was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn't we say to you in Egypt, leave us alone, let us serve the Egyptians. It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert. We've had a very rapid change of heart among the Israelites who've seen so much of God's power in Egypt, but the fear of this moment, the terror they're experiencing as they're being pursued by chariots and horsemen makes them angry and they lash out at Moses.

And he responds, don't be afraid, stand firm and you will see the deliverance Yahweh will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. Yahweh will fight for you, you need only to be still.

And then God gives him instructions about how this is going to work. Yahweh said to Moses, why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on, raise your staff. This is the same staff we've seen all through the signs and wonders that has been a wonder working instrument.

He raises his staff and stretches out his hand over the sea to divide the water so the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground. Verse 16 is significant, that phrase dry ground is the same phrase that we hear used in Genesis chapter one to describe the dry ground that emerges out of the sea when God is creating a place for humans to inhabit. And now God is making dry ground in the midst of this chaotic waters.

He is recreating or newly creating a nation and this is another phase in that creation of a nation. I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so they will go in after them and I will gain glory through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen. The Egyptians will know that I am Yahweh when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen.

So then we have the the actual showdown. The angel of God has been traveling in front of Israel's army and he withdraws and goes behind them and the pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them. I'm not sure the difference between the angel and the pillar if they're the same thing or are they actually seeing an angel distinctly separate from the the cloud.

I'm not sure but in any case both move and go behind them to be a shield between them and the Egyptians who are pursuing them. Throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to one side and light to the other side so neither went near the other all night long. So again we have a distinction between the Egyptians and the Israelites.

The Israelites have light, the Egyptians are still in darkness. Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and all that night Yahweh drove the sea back with a strong east wind, again the wind that brings judgment, and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground with a wall of water on their right and on their left.

The Egyptians pursued them and all Pharaoh's horses and chariots and horsemen followed them into the sea. During the last watch of the night Yahweh looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. He jammed the wheels of their chariots so that they had difficulty driving.

The word for jammed there is actually the Hebrew word for lead and it sounds just like the word for festival. So the Israelites have requested to go to the wilderness to celebrate a hug, a festival, and and now God is hugging Pharaoh's chariots. He's like, fine, I'll give you a festival.

There's an interesting play on words. So that they had difficulty driving and the Egyptians said, let's get away from the Israelites. Yahweh is fighting for them against Egypt.

Duh, that's what he's been doing the whole for all these chapters, but they're finally getting the bigger picture now in a military context. Then Yahweh said to Moses, stretch out your hand over the sea so the waters may flow back over the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen. Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and at daybreak, here we are, we finally have daytime.

At daybreak the sea went back to its place. The Egyptians were fleeing toward it and Yahweh swept them into the sea. The water flowed back and covered its chariots and horsemen.

The entire army of Pharaoh that had swallowed, sorry, that had followed the Israelites into the sea, not one of them survived. We've talked about how many echoes there are in this text already to things that have previously happened. Not one survived.

The dry land, the driving, the east wind, and now we're going to see the decisive end. The Israelites went through the sea on dry ground with a wall of water on their right and on their left. That day Yahweh saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore, just like they've seen other things lying dead on the shore, the fish lying dead on the shore, the piles of frogs lying dead.

And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of Yahweh displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared Yahweh and put their trust in him and in Moses, his servant, which will be important going forward because Moses is going to be leading them through difficult territory. I want to consider, pause here to consider a question that often comes up and this question is based on a passage that's actually back in chapter 12. Chapter 12, verse 37, right as they're leaving Egypt, it says the Israelites journeyed from Ramses to Sukkoth.

There were about 600,000 men on foot besides women and children. Many other people went up with them and also large droves of livestock, both flocks and herds. We've talked about the mixed multitude that goes with them, but we haven't talked about this number of how many Hebrews left Egypt.

So our English translations say 600,000 men. So why would we perhaps question this number? Well, there's a couple of reasons why people have raised a question here. That would total over two million Israelites at minimum.

If you had 600,000 men who were a fighting age, plus 600,000 women who were married to them, plus all of their children, plus even the boys who are below the age of whatever qualified them to be in the military, we've got well over two million Israelites. And archaeologists tell us that the total population of Egypt in this time period was only 2.12 million. So if we have two million Israelites leaving Egypt, that means there's hardly anybody left.

And it's such a great disparity that it feels unlikely. The other problem is an internal one. So there's the archaeological problem, but there's an internal problem.

And that is the question, how could 12 brothers who go down to just 70 people in their family at the beginning of Exodus become 600,000 men plus women and children in only four generations? The genealogy in chapter six only lists four generations. And so it seems like that's a really rapid increase and it seems untenable. There's other logistical problems with this number because the size of the camp that they would need and the length of the time it would take them to cross the Sea of Reeds, if you had even 50 wide, it would take well over eight hours to cross the entire Sea of Reeds at a very rapid pace.

And if you include women and children and flocks and herds trying to cross, it just doesn't seem logistically possible for them to cross the sea in that length of time. So how do we handle this? Well, our options are, we have several options for how to think about this. We could conclude that the archaeologists are just wrong, that there were lots and lots more people in Egypt, more than 2.12 million, and that more evidence will come up in the future that show that there were more people.

I didn't mention this, but it's not just the population of Egypt. That's the problem. It's also the population of Canaan at the time of the conquest.

So once these people cross through the wilderness and enter into Canaan, we're looking at a population of under 2 million for Canaan. And so if all of them come into Canaan, the archaeologists say there's not a sudden population explosion in Canaan at that time. And that's what we would expect.

So we could say archaeologists are just wrong about that. They've misestimated the number of people, and that's possible. We could also say the numbers are rhetorical or symbolic.

So here are some of the proposals people have made. Ronald Allen says he thinks the numbers have been multiplied by 10 for rhetorical reasons. It's a way of emphasizing the magnitude of what God has done.

So everything gets multiplied by 10. So if that happened, then instead of 600,000 men, it would be 60,000 men. And so you end up with a grand total of about 200,000 instead of 2 million.

And that would account for the fact that we have round numbers here, and in other lists, there are never numbers in the ones place. They're always a multiple of 10. And so Allen points to that as evidence that this is a multiple of 10.

It also fits with the exact number of firstborns in relation to the Levites later on in the book of Numbers. Terence Fredheim suggests that this number actually represents the population of Israel during a later period. So during the time of Solomon, there were about 2 million Israelites.

This would be the author's way of saying that everyone alive during Solomon's day is part of the people that God delivered from Egypt. So it'd be making a theological point about the belonging of a later generation. There's a third possibility that I find more persuasive, and it still has some problems with it, but it's the one that I feel like has the least number of problems.

And that is to suggest that the phrase has simply been mistranslated, and that really it should read 600 military units plus families rather than 600,000 men. So I'm not the only one to suggest this. Many others have considered this possibility.

If we have an average military unit of between 6 and 15 men, that would be about 10 average, that gives us about 6,000 fighting men plus women and children, that would give us a grand total of about 22,000 Israelites, which is a lot of slaves to suddenly have up and leave Egypt. It's still miraculous and still amazing, but it fits better with the population sizes of Egypt and Canaan and solves the problem of how to support that many people in a wilderness context for such a long time, where are they going to find water, how many animals do they have, etc. Now, you might be wondering, like, on what basis can you just change the biblical text like that? How can you just change it from thousands to military units? So let me explain how people get to this conclusion.

We write our numbers out in numerals, but Hebrew doesn't have numerals for numbers, it spells them out in words. So this particular text in Exodus 12, 37 says there were 600 eleph on foot, men without children. So it's the word six, the word hundred, and then the word eleph, and the word eleph has actually four possible meanings.

The first is thousand, so this could mean 600,000, just as our English translations have rendered it. But in some contexts, eleph means head of cattle. It's like a homonym that has several possible meanings.

So head of cattle obviously doesn't work here. It can also mean military unit, so 600 military units, and that would of course be just considering the men, not the women and children. And it can also mean clan, 600 clans.

The reason why it doesn't seem like it would mean clan here is because then it specifies men without children, and a clan includes the whole family. But here's an example of a passage where the word eleph means clan, because I think it's helpful to kind of see how this would work out. In Judges 615, Gideon protests, but sir, how can I deliver Israel? My eleph is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.

And clearly eleph here does not mean head of cattle, and it doesn't mean thousand. My thousand is the weakest. No, my head of cattle is the weakest.

No, my military unit is the weakest in Manasseh, could be, or my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I'm the least in my family. He's trying to show that he doesn't feel like he's up to the task. Joshua 22 14 is another example of this use of eleph to mean clan, so you can look that up if you're curious for another example.

So where does this leave us? If the word is taken as military unit, then what we have are 22,000 Israelites leaving Ish, leaving Egypt, crossing the desert, and coming into the land. And you might say, oh, but the book of Numbers has all kinds of big numbers too. And the same principle applies in the book of Numbers and other places where every time where you come across the word thousand in your English translation, you're looking at the Hebrew word eleph, and it's possible that it could mean military unit instead.

So for example, if you're reading along in Joshua, and it says 6,000 men died in this battle, it could be saying six military units died. Like six military units were wiped out. It might have been about 60 men, which would have been a huge loss to the community if that many men died in one battle.

So we're used to seeing the numbers as thousands, and my suggestion that these are military units instead and that the numbers are smaller is not an attempt, just to be very clear, this is not an attempt to undermine the miraculous nature of the exodus. I see this as a very miraculous, very historical event, but I want to be careful to read the text in the way that the author or the narrator intends for me to understand it. And it seems to me that there's a long history of potential mistranslation or misunderstanding of the numbers.

This is partly because of how much time has elapsed since ancient times. And so interpreters don't realize a number that is untenable in terms of archaeology, or they don't realize that a word has multiple meanings. And so there becomes a long tradition of translating it a certain way, and then anyone who comes along and suggests that that's a mistranslation is accused of trying to undermine scripture.

So I hope I've slowed down enough and explained it carefully enough so that you see I'm not trying to undermine scripture, I'm trying to understand clearly what is this saying. To go from 70 Israelites to 22,000 Israelites in four generations is still a very rapid proliferation of people. But if you say that it went to 2 million, you're faced with all kinds of problems.

Another problem I didn't mention is that if you have a sudden increase to that number of men, if we have 600,000 men, based on the number of firstborn that are listed in numbers, you have to then conclude that every woman had a hundred children. To get that many firstborn in relation to the total number, it's only like 22,000 firstborns out of 600,000 men. So that would mean every family has a hundred children, half of them women, half of them men.

These things are just impossible. Even if we leave archaeology out of it, there's all kinds of internal contradictions with the numbers. So more work needs to be done on this, but this is just a taste of the different approaches to the large number in Exodus, and I hope that some of you, if you're curious, will go out and do some more digging because it's a really interesting topic.