And Jehovah said to Moses, Why dost thou cry unto me? Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward.
The Red Sea lay ahead. Pharaoh's army was closing in behind. Moses had just told the people to stand still and watch God save them. Then God breaks in with a question that sounds like a rebuke, and the scene turns from waiting into walking.
Moses had spoken bold words of faith to the people. What he did next drew God's question.
Verses 13 and 14 are the words to faith. The Lord was now taking up their case and fighting their battles. It was no longer a question of Pharaoh and Israel, but of Pharaoh and Jehovah. But notice that the words are Moses' words, given to him by the Spirit of God. After he had spoken them, he assured the people that all their enemies would be wiped out. Then he began to pray, for the Lord said to him, "Why do you cry to Me?"
Two commands sit side by side and look like opposites. Commentators read the tension differently. Some see the two orders as one lesson in two stages:
The command of Moses, "Stand still," and the one now given, "Go forward," do not contradict each other. They did need the reminder that they could do nothing. But faith should have seen that the work was done, and marched boldly forward through the sea that seemed to block their way. Death, and the power of death, had been overcome, the salvation had been completed, and so they were to go forward.
Others read God's reply as a correction of Moses:
Moses displayed a calm faith we may well admire. Yet he made a mistake. He told the people to "stand still." But when he cried to the Lord, the command was that they "go forward," and he was to act on behalf of the Lord. Their going forward was to be an act of faith. By it they would take hold of the remarkable salvation God was about to work. If they had remained where they were, the dividing of the sea would not have delivered them.
The obvious objection to "go forward" is that there was nowhere to go. Water blocked the way.
There is no use in crying when we ought to be acting, just as there is no use in acting when we ought to be waiting. Yet that is always our way. We try to move forward when we ought to stand still, and we stand still when we ought to move forward. In Israel's case, the question might rise in the heart, "Where are we to go?" To all appearance a barrier stands in the way that nothing can get past. Nature could never solve this question. But we may rest assured of this: God never gives a command without also giving the power to obey it… When Christ commanded the man with the withered hand to stretch it out, the man might naturally have said, "How can I stretch out an arm that hangs dead at my side?" But he did not raise any question at all. With the command, and from the same source, came the power to obey.
God did not promise a full view of the crossing before the first step.
The hand of God opens the way for us to take the first step, and that is all faith ever asks. God never gives guidance for two steps at a time. I must take one step, and then I get light for the next. "By faith the people crossed the Red Sea as on dry land." It does not take faith to begin a journey when I can see all the way through. To begin when I can only see the first step — that is faith. The sea opened as Israel moved forward, so that for every fresh step they needed to lean on God.
The blood in Egypt had already met God's judgment. The sea did something more.
Then you get a second thing — not the blood that meets the judge, but the power that delivers… Then the Lord says to Moses, "Tell the people of Israel to go forward." It is death seen as deliverance, completely clearing them out of the place they were in. To us it is Christ's death… The sea that let Israel out swallowed up Pharaoh and all his hosts… It is redemption, which is a great deal more than forgiveness. The blood met the case of imputing sin, but there was no deliverance out of Egypt. In fact they did not get out of Egypt until they passed through the Red Sea.
- Cry — there is no use in crying to God when the time has come to act on what He has already said.
- Command — God said "go forward" while the water still blocked the way. Commentators differ on whether that corrects Moses' "stand still" or completes it.
- Capacity — God never gives an order without giving the strength to obey it. The withered hand stretched out at Christ's word.
- Crossing — the sea parted step by step, not all at once, so that faith and not sight carried Israel through.
- Consequence — the same waters that let Israel out closed over Pharaoh. That is redemption: more than forgiveness, it is full deliverance out of the old place.
And thou, lift thy staff, and stretch out thy hand over the sea, and divide it; and the children of Israel shall go on dry [ground] through the midst of the sea.
Israel is trapped between Pharaoh's army and the water. God gives no escape route around the danger. Instead He tells Moses to stretch out his hand over the sea itself. Why does God open the way through the very thing that looks like the end?
First Israel heard, "Stand still." Now the word is, "Go forward." One writer explains why the two orders belong together.
There is no inconsistency between the command "Stand still," and the one now given, "Go forward." They did need the reminder that they could do nothing. But faith should have seen that the work was done, and marched boldly forward through the sea that seemed to block their advance. Death, and the power of death, had been overcome, the salvation had been completed, and so they were to go forward. The Lord completes the work, and that finished work of salvation opens a way of escape from Satan's power through death. Now the believer is to walk through it, confident in Him who was their Judge and has now become their Saviour.
The command to go forward came with a promise: the sea would open. But it opened one step at a time.
Here was the path of faith. The hand of God opens the way for us to take the first step, and this is all that faith ever asks. God never gives guidance for two steps at a time. I must take one step, and then I get light for the next. This keeps the heart in constant dependence upon God... It is clear that the sea was not divided all at once. Had it been, it would have been "sight" and not "faith." It does not take faith to begin a journey when I can see the whole way through. To begin when I can see only the first step — that is faith.
God used a wind to move the water. But one writer points to where the real power and authority lay.
God used the "strong east wind" as His instrument to split the Red Sea. The waters stood as crystal walls on either side and made a path for His people to cross to the other side. Yet the power and authority of God rested in the rod that Moses stretched out. "He divided the sea and let them pass through it, and made the waters stand like a heap" (Psalm 78:13).
Another writer names what the raised rod signified, and where its judgment finally fell.
Moses used the rod at the Red Sea, for it was the sign of judicial authority, and so it fittingly appears on that occasion. Judgment fell upon Christ so that we should be delivered.
The verse promises firm footing. One writer counts how often this chapter repeats the phrase.
"Tell the people of Israel to go forward," says the Lord. The hosts of Israel obey and step forward into what looked like death. Then the sea divides, crystal walls of salvation rise up on either hand, and they march on dry ground. This chapter mentions dry ground four times. It is as if God would emphasise by this figure that the death and resurrection of Christ provide the solid ground on which faith puts its feet. Nature and flesh cannot walk this path.
Nothing like this had ever happened: a whole nation walking into the sea at God's command.
God had brought Israel out of slavery. Now they were about to go through what looked to the human eye like the grave itself. In this way they would truly know the strength and the salvation of God. The Lord's way for them, away from the enemy, was the sea. Never in this world's history did men make a march so glorious and so wonderful! It was an unheard-of wonder that men should march right into the waves and then "go through the sea on dry ground."
The same divided water served two ends at once. Israel's road became Egypt's ruin.
Moses was to act, lifting up his rod over the sea, when the Lord would carve a way through it for His people. That way would be salvation to Israel but destruction to proud Pharaoh and his host. It happened in such a striking way that people would remember it for many generations. We see in type that a way of life was to be made through the waters of death.
- Command: "Stand still" and "go forward" do not clash. Israel could do nothing to make the way. Once God made it, faith was to walk it.
- Provision: Every command from God comes with the grace to obey it. The sea opened step by step, so Israel leaned on Him for each fresh step.
- Rod: The staff carried God's authority and judgment; the wind was only the instrument. That judgment fell on Christ so that we could go free.
- Dry ground: The chapter names it four times. It marks the solid footing faith stands on: the death and resurrection of Christ. Flesh cannot walk there.
- Outcome: One divided sea, two ends — a path of life for the redeemed, a grave for the pursuer, and something Israel would remember for generations.
And I, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall pursue after them; and I will glorify myself in Pharaoh and in all his host, in his chariots and in his horsemen.
God tells Israel to march into a sea that has not yet opened. Then He turns to speak about the army behind them. Before a single Egyptian chariot moves, He says what He will do with the pursuers, and why. Their pursuit will end in His own glory.
The verse says God will harden the Egyptians. Writers look at the Hebrew words used across the whole account to show what this hardening is.
"And I will harden Pharaoh's heart." This was stated before in chapter 4:21. Eighteen times we read of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. But the Hebrew uses two different words, and the difference matters. One means to "make firm" or "strong." The other means "to make stubborn." These two words show Pharaoh hardening his own heart, and God hardening it after Pharaoh went on in his wicked way. Scripture says five times that Pharaoh hardened his heart. Only then did God begin His hardening and make Pharaoh's heart stubborn. Pharaoh hardened himself, then God hardened him. God hardens as an act of judgment, because man refuses His Word. He never hardens first, and He never forces a man to be an unbeliever. There is a solemn warning in this. Thousands harden their hearts today.
You could call Egypt's charge into the seabed a military mistake. The verse rules that out. It names God as the one who moved them.
How solemn these events look in the light of Exodus 14:17 and 18. Those verses lift them far above the shallow thoughts and ideas of men. They show them to be the expression of God's sovereignty in His dealings in judgment with people who will not bend their own will. Such people fight against Him and try to stop Him from carrying out what He has purposed for the blessing of His people.
What looked to Pharaoh like an easy recapture was the trap. The hardening worked through his own sense of strength.
Then God would harden the hearts of the Egyptians, so that in haughty self-confidence they would follow Israel into the sea (v. 17). In this way God would be honored, and in a way Egypt did not expect.
God's honour here is not won at the cost of His people's rescue. The same divided sea serves both ends.
God would harden the Egyptians so that they would follow, and follow to their own destruction. And He would be glorified both in the salvation of His people and in the destruction of their enemies.
The glory God speaks of did not stay on the seashore. Forty years later, a woman named Rahab told the story back to Israel's spies.
This woman speaks of the crossing of the Red Sea, which had happened forty years before. She says it filled the nations of Canaan with terror, so that the way into the land was open from the first.
Writers read Pharaoh's pursuit as a picture of something later and larger. Another enemy was led on to the place of his own defeat.
Pharaoh's determined pursuit of God's people only led him and his armies into the place of judgment. There they were crushed and overwhelmed, in the very place where they had hoped to seize Israel. In the same way, Satan led on his armies, and the forces of this world too, both religious and political, to bring about the death of the Son of God. But the very thing in which they thought they had triumphed over the gentle and lowly Jesus became the means of the overthrow of Satan and his armies.
Both nations went into the same water. What separated them was faith, not strength.
"By faith the people crossed the Red Sea as on dry land, but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned" (Hebrews 11:29). The solemn lesson is this: to face the power of death in human confidence is certain destruction. Only the blood-bought people can pass through in safety.
- Cause. Pharaoh hardened himself first. God's hardening came after repeated refusals, and it never makes a man an unbeliever.
- Trap. Egypt's own self-confidence carried the hardening. They charged in expecting a win, and God had already made it their end.
- Glory. One divided sea did both things. It saved Israel and drowned Egypt, and God took honour from both.
- Reach. That honour travelled. Forty years later Canaan still trembled at the Red Sea, and Rahab said so.
- Pattern. An enemy presses hardest at the very place of his own defeat. That is the shape of the cross — and the warning that only the blood-bought pass through death safely.
And the Egyptians shall know that I am Jehovah, when I have glorified myself in Pharaoh, in his chariots and in his horsemen.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.