Sea of Reeds

7/29/2019 Sea of Reeds

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WHAT REALLY HAPPENED AT THE SEAOF REEDS?

LEWIS S. HAYPRESBYTERIAN COLLEGE

A FEW decades ago the Israelites' remarkable escape from Pharaoh'schariotry by their passage across the Reed Sea (Exodus 14) was amatter to be settled easily by reference to a priori assumptions. One

might take the narrative as a factually accurate account of a miraculous

deliverance, the waters dividing into two congealed heaps between which

the Israelites scurried and which broke again to sweep away the pursuing

Egyptians; or he might assume that such a story was obviouslya fanciful

legend. A third, and quite popular, alternative was to consider the

account basically accurate but the natural phenomena involved entirely

explicable according to the laws of science. Debate on the matter was

primarily a marshaling of evidence to support a conclusion already

present in one's assumptions.

The trend in contemporary criticism is apparently toward the third

of these alternatives, but there is a growing conviction that the details

of the actual event are forever lost to us. Mart in Noth expresses thespirit of the times when he affirms the solid historical basis of this decisive

event in Israel's past, but concludes that "The incident i t se l f . . . re

mains veiled from our sight."1

J. Coert Rylaarsdam, like Georg Beer,

R. H. Pfeiffer, and others before him, makes no at te mp t to ascertain

what really happened ; he is confident enough to say only that the event,

whatever it was, "lay wholly within the nexus of history and nature as

these are scientifically unders tood."2

But when one surveys some of the theories which have been offered

in explanation of the wonderful event, he can only sympathize withthose who have refused to launch out so boldly on the sea of speculation.

The controversial scientist Immanuel Velikovsky propounded the im

aginative solution that the seemingly unnatural behavior of the water

was due to certain astronomical disturbances.3

W. J. Phythian-Adams

offered the no less fanciful theory, which seems to have impressed M.

Buber also, that distant volcanic activity lay behind the unusual oc

currence.4

Such hypotheses arise, of course, entirely outside the Exodus

1

Martin Noth, The History of Israel

2

, p. 117; cf. Noth's remarks in Exodus,pp. 119-20.2

J. Coert Rylaarsdam, in the exegesis of the book of Exodus, IntB, , p. 935.


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398 JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE

account, and any relation which they may have to the biblical text is

purely a matter of conjecture; moreover, they ignore the indisputable

result of literary criticism namely, th at the story as it now stands

before us does not const itute a unity .On the other hand, it should be noted that there are some scholars

who have dared to suppose that the essentials of the incident are still

visible to the modern reader who is willing to overlook some of the pious

embellishment. For example, Bernard Anderson writes (in regard to

what he believes to be the J account) :

Notice that in this account the crossing of the Reed Sea, probably at the easternshore of Lake Timsah, occurred when an east wind drove the waters back. Thishappening is not impossible in this marshy area where the waters are shallow;

in fact, it has been witnessed at other times. The miracle was that it happenedat a particular time and with a particular meaning.s

John Bright pleads that

. . . we can add nothing to what the Bible tells us. It appears that Hebrews,attempting to escape, were penned between the sea and the Egyptian armyand

were saved when a wind drove the waters back, allowing them to pass (Ex. 14:2127); the pursuing Egyptians, caught by the returning flood, were drowned.

6

T. H. Robinson explains:

Shallow water of this kind may easily be driven back by a strong wind, leavingthe sand bare. With the dropping ofthe wind the water returns, coming, probably,under the sand first, as it does in so many such places with the tide, and forminga quicksand in which the wheels of the chariots would first sink. Finally, as thedried spacefilledwith water, the infantry and others would be caught and drowned.

But under close scrutiny these solutions fare no better than the earlier

ones. In the first place, there is nothing to commend such a rationalistic

reconstruction of the event other than the fact that it is somewhat more

rational th an the biblical text which is to say, more acceptable to

our scientific point of view. Certainly the complex story of the miracle

offers no ground for this sort of reduction to the lowest rational denomi

nator. In the second place, the process of rationalizing has been care

lessly pursued; for whereas the water must be assumed to have been

shallow enough to account in a credible way for the wind's removal of it,

it must then be assumed to have been deep enough upon its return to

sweep away the entire Egyptian force. In the third place, the same

error as noted above has been committed here also i.e ., the inner

contradiction and lack of unity in the story has not been taken seriously.

If it has been observed at all, there is no reason given for regarding the

motif of the water's movement as the one which is historically authentic.


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HAY: WHAT HAPPENED AT THE SEA OF REEDS? 399

With the last objection we are given what is perhaps our proper

point of depar ture. Th e literary critics, despite the air of assurance

with which they individually proceed, have been unable to convince

one another of the precise, or even approximate, limits of the majorcons tituent st ra ta in the narrative. The widely divergent solutions

offered for the literary puzzle, each supported by plausible but un

convincing arguments, leave us no certainty about the literary structure

except in regard to a single conclusion: the story as it now stands is a

composite of several traditions which, having been brought together,

fail to present a clear picture of a comprehensible event. Whether by their

own arguments to that end, or unintentionally by their failure to provide

a credible solution, the critics have placed this fact beyond doubt.

This negative conclusion may prove, however, to be of some value.Whereas the absence of a consensus among literary critics prohibits the

historian from proceeding confidently on the basis of one or more of

the traditions of J or E or P, it may yet be possible to observe which

elements of the tradition are contradictory or at least independent of

the others, and then ask whether any of these elements provides a clue

to a historically comprehensible event which in turn may have given

rise to the other forms of the tradition. 8 In this regard M. Noth makes a

significant observation: "It is clear that for J the 'driving back' and the

'return' of the sea is only a subsidiary element of the story which is notabsolutely essential for his description of events and which does not fit

into it at all smoothly."9 The significant point here is not Noth's re

construction of J but his perception that the movement of the water,

which was the notion taken by Robinson, Bright, and Anderson as the

dominating feature of the story and therefore central in the reconstruc

tion of the historical event, is an ill-fitting element in the episode, and

that there is no reason to assume that it is the central datum with which

the historical critic must concern himself.

Is there evidence of another tradition which omits the motif of the

water's movement, and which provides the basis for a reconstruction

of an understandable historical event at the Reed Sea? The purpose of

this essay is to show th at this question is to be answered affirmatively,

and to demonstrate that such evidence appears in those pieces of the

tradition which speak of a military encounter in which Israel defeated

the pursuing chariotry of Pharaoh. Such a solution commends itself to

us from the outset, since, after all, military combat is usually what has

taken place when two armed groups have met and one is destroyed.

It is difficult to discern whether, or to what extent, an earlier form


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of the story may have described a battle in more detail, but if the fuller

description was ever present it appears to have been progressively dis-

placed by the addition of the details which are now extant in the Exodus

narrative. In the final stages of transformation the batt le itself wasalmost entirely replaced by the devastating effects of the returning flood.

Yet there remain in the text a number of words and expressions which

clearly betray the original tradition.

(a) The brief notation of 13 is specifically indicates that Israel went

up out of Egypt "equipped for battle/' Such a remark is meaningless

(and has been treated so by critics) unless there is a battle to follow.

(b) The verb "encamp" (mn) and its cognate "host" or "army"

(ranD) are used a number of times of both Israel and the Egyptians,

e. g., 13 20 ; 14 2, 9, 19, 20. These expressions are the usual ones for speak-ing of a military affair. They may have a neutral sense also, it is true;

but 14 20 rules out that possibility here, since it speaks of the "host of

Egypt" admittedly a bat tle group and the "host of Israel" in

balancing phrases.

(c) In the moment of crisis Moses assures the people (14 14) that

"Yahweh will fight (or) for you" i. e., Yahweh will win the battle

for you.

(d) Yahweh is said to have "discomfited" (DDH) the Egyptians

(14 24), which is the expression characteristically employed to speak of

God's action in Israel's battles . Compare Exod 23 27; Josh 10 10; Judg

4 15; I Sam 7 10; Ps 18 15 (par. II Sam 22 15; Ps 144 ).

(e) The manner in which Yahweh discomfited the Egyptians is

delineated in 14 25: he "clogged" their chariot wheels. Th e Hebrew

reads literally "remove" ("HD); the LXX, Syriac, and Samaritan Penta

teuch read "bi nd ." Although the text is obscure, the result clause, "so

that they drove heavily," necessitates a reading similar to the one

given. The sense of the whole is unmistakably that when the pursuers

attempted to cross the marshy (watery?) area called the Sea of Reeds,

Yahweh bogged their chariot wheels in the mire to such an extent that

the major weapon on which the Egyptians had relied became unmaneuver-

able and completely ineffective. This discomfiture of the enemy by Yahweh

is by every measure the central element in the story, and when it is recog

nized as such it becomes clear why the location of the incident at "the

sea" is significant.

(f) In the same verse the Egyptians' cry is raised: "Let us flee from

before Israel; for Yahweh fights for them against the Egyptians." The

Egyptians now call for a retreat in view of the fact that the battle has

turned suddenly against them The use of the verb "to fight" or "to do


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(g) Th us "Yahweh routed the Egyptians in the midst of the sea"

(14 27). The verb which the RSV renders "rout" "iya) means literally

" t o shake out," as one would grasp a garment by the corners and shake

the dust from it, or "t o shake off," as a tree shakes off i ts leaves in thefall a fit expression for a sound military defeat in which a band of

pursuers is thrown off.

(h) Th e victory of Yahweh in Israel 's bat tle is celebrated in the

chant of Miriam:

Sing to Yahweh, forhe has triumphed gloriously;The horse and its riderhe has thrown into the sea (15 21; cf. 15 l).

It is widelyacknowledged that this brief couplet attributed to Miriam

is the original, perhaps dating from a time very near the event it celebrates, from which the longer "Song of Moses" (15 l-is) grew up. On

purely literary grounds it is clear that the words constitute a victory

chant, a brief hymn of praise to Yahweh for the military success which

he gave to Israel. Moreover, there is no reason to read into the couplet

any notion that the Egyptians were defeated by a sudden rush of water,

but only that the defeat occurred "in the sea."

It is possible, however, that this victory chant, which lends itself to

several interpretations in its usual translation, may preserve a most

revealing detail about the event it commemorates. The verb in thesecond line, , which is rendered " t o throw " or " to cast," may also

mean " t o shoot, " as with a bow and arrow. As a ma tter of fact, except

for the pi'el form which means "to deceive," the only other occurrences

in the OT are participial forms which have the meaning "shooters" or

"bo wme n" (Je r4 29; Ps 78 9).10

Miriam's song may thus have been

intended to read :

Sing to Yahweh, for he has triumphed gloriously;The horse and its riderhe shot in (the midst of) the sea.

With this evidence of a battl e, which runs like a thread through the

entire narrative, one is able to reconstruct with reasonable certainty the

actual event. Israel, pursued by Pharaoh's chariots, decided to make a

stand at the Sea of Reeds. Whether they deliberately chose this site or

were forced into a defense at th is point is now impossible to determ ine.

But it seems likely that since they knew that under ordinary circum

stances their small group of warriors could not survive an attack by a

well-trained chariot force, they deliberately fled to this spot where the

10The same air of ambiguity hangs about the verb in 15 4. "To shoot" (with

arrows) is a common meaning of the word; contrarily "to cast " in the sense in which


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terrain would be in their favor. It may be th at the Reed Sea was made

at the time unusually shallow, or even bereft of normally shallow water,

by extraordinary weather conditions, though this entire motif may be of

secondary origin. Using tactics which they neither invented nor werethe last to employ, the Hebrews crossed the muddy flat (by night?) and

lay in wait for the Egyp tians to follow them into the mire. When the

advancing charioteers suddenly realized that they had been immobilized

by the mud, it was too late; the Hebrew archers found their mark, and

Pharaoh's mighty troops were slaughtered by an enemy whom they had

thought to be an easy prey.

The particular form of the battle tradition from which the extant

bits of narrative were drawn is obviously conditioned by the concept

of the "holy war," as G. von Rad has shown." Since the "holy w ar"theology was a development not earlier than the time of the tribal

amphictyony, the form of the battle tradition now visible to us is some

what removed from the historical event. Bu t the fact th at it later came

to be understood as an example of the "holy war" presupposes an earlier

straightforward story of a military encounter between the Hebrews

and their enemies.

To trace out how this original account was transformed into the

fanciful story now contained in Exodus would be beyond the scope of

this essay; nevertheless, several suggestions in that regard may be in

order. First , the incident at the sea became associated in the national

consciousness of Israel with two other events which would naturally

have effected the way in which it was understood and passed on. Th e

first of these is the crossing of the Jordan River at the entrance into the

land of Canaan (Josh 3 u ff.), when a temporary stoppage of the water's

flow may have been caused by a landslide but was interpreted as a

miraculous act of Yahweh whereby Israel was allowed to cross the bed

of the water "on dry ground." This mighty deed of Yahweh seemed to

parallel the escape at the Reed Sea (cf. Josh 4 23; Ps 114 3, 5); but the

supreme importance of the deliverance of Israel from Egypt led to a

sort of metathesis of the events in the people's memory so that the

la tter was seen as a dim reflection of the former. Hence, over a period of

time the Reed Sea became a tremendous body of water which stood

up in a heap to form "a wall to them on their right hand and on their

left" (14 22, 29), bu t returned to cover " th e chariots and the horsemen

and all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea" (14 2s).

The second incident is recorded in prose and poetry in Judg 4-5.1 2 In

11


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the battle with Sisera, the Canaanite general, Yahweh promises Barak

(in the prose account) that he will draw out Sisera to meet him at the

river Kishon (4 7). There follows a narrative in which ''Yahweh routed

Sisera and all his chariots and all his army () before Barak at theedge of the sword'' (4 15), th e general himself fleeing from the scene on

foot only to be slain by the scheming Kenite woman Jael. In the poem

of Judges 5, however, the battle is concluded when the river Kishon,

with the complicity of the stars, sweeps the enemy away in a rushing

torrent (5 20-21). The similarity between the principal factors in this

story and the Reed Sea episode is striking: Israel is delivered when the

vastly superior enemy chariot force is swept away by the water. Sisera's

flight on foot may be explained by the assumption that his chariot was

lost in his at te mpt to cross the river. Thus it appears likely that Israelagain employed the same tactics which she had used successfully against

the Egyptians, in which a chariot force was drawn into a sort of trap or

ambush at the site of a body of water. At any rate, the poetic version

of the latter battle undoubtedly became associated in the national

traditions with the deliverance at the Reed Sea, and may well have

influenced the form in which the earlier account was handed on.

A second and quite different influence on the Israelite saga is to be

discovered in the complex of myth, widely known in the eastern world,

in which the deity creates the world by a ' 'division of the waters" or by

"conquering the watery chaos," as indeed in Gen 1 6-10. That t he

exodus from Egypt through the sea was associated with, and under

stood in terms of, the creation my th is specifically attes ted by Isa 51 9.13

But the association of the two concepts did more than form the theo

logical basis for a profound conception of Yahweh's act of deliverance;

it seems to have influenced the formation of the narrative tradition itself.

Exodus now tells how God created for himself a people by rescuing them

from the watery chaos and abandoning their enemies to it.14

These suggestions are perhaps sufficient to indicate how an extra

ordinary, though perfectly understandable, military victory of Israel

was augmented over the years so that at length it became the dramatic

story which is now presented to the reader of Israel's sacred history.

3 See also Gerhard von Rad, OldTestament Theology, 1, p. 178; and Sigmund

Mowinckel, Psalmenstudien, 11: Das Thronbesteigungsfest Jahwas und der UrsprungderEschatologie, p. 54.


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