Exodus 13:17-18
God led them not by the way of the Philistines
The short road is rejected for a stated reason: lest peradventure the people repent when they see war. The long way is a mercy about readiness.
Places of the Bible
The Red Sea
They were led to a dead end on purpose, and the dead end is the point.
The route is chosen against the obvious one. God does not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near, and instead turns them back to encamp before the sea, boxed between water and an army. Pharaoh reads the map exactly as intended: they are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in. The trap is real and it was arranged.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of The Red Sea
- 01
- 02
Exodus 14:10-12
Because there were no graves in Egypt
The complaint is sarcastic and entirely understandable. They would rather serve the Egyptians than die in the wilderness, and they say so.
- 03
Exodus 14:13-15
Stand still, and go forward
Two instructions that look opposite arrive one verse apart. The second is addressed to the people and the first to their fear.
- 04
Exodus 14:21-22
The waters were divided
A strong east wind works all night. The detail that matters is dry ground, repeated, because mud would have finished them as surely as water.
- 05
Exodus 15:20-21
Miriam took a timbrel
The song is answered antiphonally by all the women with timbrels and dances, and its first line is the one Moses had just sung.
Why it matters
What happens at the water sets the shape of every later rescue in Scripture. The people want to go back, Moses tells them to stand still and see the salvation of the LORD, and then the instruction contradicts him: wherefore criest thou unto me, speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward. A strong east wind blows all night. They go through on dry ground with the water a wall on either hand, the pursuers follow into the same corridor, and the morning watch looks out on an empty shore. Then Miriam takes a timbrel and the oldest song in the Bible is sung on the far bank.
3 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
