And the Angel of God, who went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before them, and stood behind them.
Israel is trapped between the sea and Pharaoh's advancing army. At that moment the God who had been walking ahead of them changes position. It raises two questions: who is this Angel, and why does He move to the back?
The Angel who leads Israel is no ordinary messenger. One writer compares the passages where He appears.
It is clear, from this passage and from chapter 14 and others, that Scripture gives Him divine attributes. For example, God says of Him, "My name is in Him." In Exodus 14, Scripture first calls Him an angel and then identifies Him with Jehovah (compare verse 24 with verse 19). The fair conclusion is that in this angel we have none other than the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, Jehovah. In His many appearances we may see foreshadowings of His incarnation. It is He who has always been the leader of His people.
Everything in the chapter turns on this one move. It settles the battle before a blow is struck.
Verses 19 and 20 record what we may dare to call the decisive move in this tremendous drama. The Angel of God in the pillar of cloud moved from the front of the Israelites. He planted Himself between them and the pursuing Egyptians. He was about to walk with them through the waters of death. But He would go covering their rear with the cloud of His presence. Whatever was now about to happen, no Egyptian would be able to strike a single Israelite unless he could pierce through the cloud. Before he could touch any of those escaping from slavery he would have to overcome God Almighty!
The pillar changed its role as Israel's need changed.
The army of Egypt had come out, and were pressing on the heels of the children of Israel. Then the Pillar puts itself between the two armies. Instead of being lit up all through, it becomes darkness on the side turned to the Egyptians, and light on the side turned to the Israelites. So the one could not come near the other. It was a shield now, as it had been a guide before. It is just whatever the people needed.
One writer sees this double effect as a picture of the cross.
It is both very solemn and very interesting to notice the double aspect of the "pillar" in this chapter. How like the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ! That cross has a double aspect too. It forms the foundation of the believer's peace. At the same time it seals the condemnation of a guilty world. The very same blood cleanses the believer's conscience and gives him perfect peace. That same blood stains this earth and completes its guilt.
The same writer follows this protection through to the conscience.
Jehovah placed Himself right between Israel and the enemy — this was protection indeed... So God always places Himself between His people and every enemy, so that "no weapon formed against them can prosper." He has placed Himself between us and our sins. It is our happy privilege to find Him between us and everyone and everything that could be against us. This is the true way to find both peace of heart and peace of conscience. The believer may make a careful and anxious search for his sins, but he cannot find them. Why? Because God is between him and them.
The blood of the Lamb had already sheltered Israel. Here they learn something more.
They have a backward look for a moment, and they find that God has put Himself between themselves and the enemy. He seemed to say — Come on, Pharaoh, you may touch them if you can, you may put your hand on them if you can. And were they safe? Indeed they were. They were safe under the shelter of the blood, but now they are to learn that they are saved. I am safe when under the shelter of the blood of the Lamb. I am saved when the power of the enemy is broken... The angel going behind them was most gracious. If the light had been in front, the rear would have been in terror. Imagine six hundred thousand of them, only five abreast. The first five would say, We are all right, but the last five are not very safe. But God comes in between the last five and the enemy, and how safe they all were, with the light of God shining over their heads.
- Who moves — The Angel is Jehovah Himself. Israel's leader is God the Son, and His appearances point forward to His incarnation.
- Where He moves — He leaves the front and takes the rear. Now the enemy must overcome God Almighty to touch one Israelite.
- What He becomes — The guide becomes a shield. The pillar is whatever the people need, when they need it.
- What it shows — One cloud, two effects: darkness to Egypt, light to Israel. So with the cross: the believer's peace and the world's condemnation at once.
- What it gives — God stands between you and the enemy, and between you and your sins. Safe under the blood; saved when God breaks the enemy's power.
And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and was a cloud and darkness, and lit up the night; and the one did not come near the other all the night.
The sea lies in front of Israel, and Pharaoh's army presses in from behind. The pillar that had led them now moves to the rear, stands between the two camps, and keeps the pursuers back all night.
An enemy who wanted Israel now had a different problem.
The Lord placed Himself right between Israel and the enemy — this was protection indeed. Before Pharaoh could touch a hair of Israel's head, he would have to make his way through the very tent of the Almighty — yes, through the Almighty Himself. This is how God always places Himself between His people and every enemy, so that no weapon formed against them can prosper. He has placed Himself between us and our sins; and it is our happy privilege to find Him between us and everyone and everything that could be against us.
The cloud had gone ahead of the people as a guide. Here it takes a new place and a new work.
The army of Egypt had come out and was pressing on the heels of the children of Israel; and then the Pillar puts itself between the two armies. It is no longer lit up and shining all over. It becomes darkness on the side turned toward the Egyptians, and light on the side turned toward the Israelites. So the one could not come near the other. It was a shield now, as it had been a guide before. It is just whatever the people needed. That was its way. It expressed the grace of the One who had now saved Israel.
One writer asks us to picture the scene from where Israel stood.
Now consider the situation. Behind the very last of the company was the presence of the Almighty, like a searchlight of huge power. It was not in their eyes to dazzle them. It was placed so that its light, reflected from the glassy walls of water, must have lit up all their way. All that night Israel walked in the light, and the enemy, despite their swift chariots, was stumbling in the darkness. All that night too the Angel of God Himself was walking through the sea of death. That Angel was the representative of the Lord.
Older translations bring out the split more sharply than the ESV: the cloud was "darkness to them," the Egyptians, but "gave light by night" to Israel. One commentator sees the cross working the same way.
It is both very solemn and very interesting to notice the double aspect of the "pillar" in this chapter. It was a cloud and darkness to the Egyptians, but it gave light by night to Israel. How like the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ! That cross truly has a double aspect as well. It forms the foundation of the believer's peace, and at the same time seals the condemnation of a guilty world. The very same blood that cleanses the believer's conscience and gives him perfect peace stains this earth and completes its guilt.
The sea had not yet opened. Israel was still waiting on the shore.
The Lord steps in and puts Himself between Satan and His people... Before He gives the comfort of deliverance, He always makes sure that Satan does not touch us.
Israel brought nothing to that night's safety.
The finest soldiers of Egypt might well look down on that panic-stricken crowd. But they were under the shield of Almighty power. Before anyone could reach them, he must first meet and overcome God Himself... It is therefore not what we are, but what God is. And notice that the One who is for the believer is against the enemy. What gave light to the children of Israel was a cloud and darkness to Pharaoh and his army.
Egypt could not see the people it was chasing. One writer reads that blocked view as a picture of the death of Christ.
We may take the cloud here as a symbol of the death of Christ, which comes in as a mighty barrier between the world and us. The marked-out path is on the resurrection side of the death of Christ. So the sharpest mind cannot grasp it. Because of the cloud, the Egyptians could not see through to the Israelites. It was darkness to them, but light to the Israelites. "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God... they are spiritually discerned."
- Between — God does not merely help from a distance; He puts Himself in the gap, so an enemy must get through Him first.
- Shield — The pillar guided from the front. Now it guards from the rear, becoming whatever the people need.
- Two sides — One cloud, two effects: darkness to Egypt, light to Israel. The cross divides the same way — a guilty world on one side, a believer at peace on the other.
- First — Protection came before deliverance. God secured them on the shore before He opened the sea.
- Ground — Their safety rested on what God is, not on what they were. Almighty power kept a frightened crowd safe all night.
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and Jehovah made the sea go [back] by a strong east wind all the night, and made the sea dry [land], and the waters were divided.
The night Israel spent trapped between Pharaoh's army and the water ended with a road where there had been no road. Commentators ask what opened the sea — a rod, a wind, or God Himself — and what that path pictures for us.
Two things act in this verse at once: Moses' outstretched hand and a wind God sends. One writer traces where the real 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 through which His people could pass to the other side. Yet it was the rod stretched out by Moses that carried the power and authority of God. "He divided the sea and let them pass through it, and made the waters stand like a heap" (Ps. 78:13); "He rebuked the Red Sea, and it became dry" (Ps. 106:9).
God did not open the sea in an instant. He took the whole night over it, and the ground He gave them was dry, not mud.
The Lord caused the sea to divide by means of a strong east wind blowing all night. He could have done this more quickly, but He did not, for Israel needed the delay. The sea bottom did not remain muddy, but became dry land. The children of Israel did not stop to marvel at the wonder of this great miracle in front of their eyes. They marched forward between the two upright walls of water. The power of God alone had formed those walls.
The sea in front of them had looked like the end of them. It became the way out.
Israel came up to the Red Sea, trembling and pressed by Pharaoh, the prince of the world. In front of them lay death and judgment, or destruction. God acts for them, and death and judgment turn into deliverance, because Christ undergoes death and judgment. In that way He secures us and lets us get out free on the other side.
Commentators read both the rod and the wind as pointing forward. The wind is not a pleasant breeze in Scripture — it is the wind that withers.
This "way of the sea" is God's ordained way for His people — a way we pass by faith, to start our pilgrim path with God. The rod of Moses clears this dry path for them to pass through, and "a strong east wind all night" clears it just as truly. We ought to be able to interpret this without difficulty. The rod of Moses is the rod of power in the shepherd's hand: and has not our Shepherd split open for us a path through death? Then there is the strong east wind of adversity. Notice in Pharaoh's dream (Gen. 41:6) how the east wind blasts the ears of corn. That wind blew through all the terrible night of His distress. Was it not that wind which in fact cleared the way for us through those waters of death?
The same sea did two opposite things.
God used what stood for death itself to destroy Israel's foes and to deliver His people.
Israel did not make this path, and they were not the first to walk it.
So we may say that Jehovah did not only make the way through the sea. He went that way Himself. Israel went through because they took the way He had made. Here then we clearly have the second picture of the death of Christ given in Israel's history. The first, of course, was the lamb sacrificed on the Passover night. This one carries us a step further, since it pictures not only death but resurrection too.
Some have tried to explain the crossing as a natural event. One detail rules that out.
Critical scholars have tried to explain this miracle as a natural event. But they overlooked one thing: on their right and on their left the waters were a wall. It was a grave, so to speak, into which Israel passed, when God's power had made the way through it. It was faith which led them through. "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).
- Rod — the wind was the tool. The authority lay in the rod Moses stretched out. The Psalms give God alone the credit for dividing the sea.
- Night — He could have opened it faster; the long night gave Israel dry ground instead of mud, and a delay they needed.
- Way — death and judgment stood in front of them. That became their road out, because Christ went through death and judgment first.
- Wind — the east wind blasts and withers. It blew all through the night of His distress, and it cleared the path.
- Wall — the water stood as a wall on both sides. Israel walked through this grave by faith. The same grave closed on their enemies.
And the children of Israel went through the midst of the sea on the dry [ground]; and the waters were a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.
An army closes in behind Israel; an ocean blocks the way ahead. The water that trapped them becomes the road out, and commentators read this moment both as history and as a picture of how God saves.
God did not remove the sea. He changed what it did.
The rod of judicial authority is stretched out, not over Israel, but for them, over the sea. Death becomes a pathway for the people instead of a gulf. They can cross it with dry feet. What a new pathway it was! What a solemn hour for Israel as a nation, when they passed between these walls of water on their right hand and on their left, raised by the action of "the east wind" — floods that, instead of swallowing them, proved to be their defence!
The same walls that fenced Israel in also fenced the enemy out.
No flanking move by the enemy was possible; the only course open was to follow behind the Israelites. Then Israel saw their enemies dead on the seashore. The returning waves had overwhelmed them. They were saved. The sea had not swallowed them, and their enemies had not destroyed them.
The text does not say they waded or swam. One writer counts how often the chapter repeats what they walked on.
The armies of Israel obey and step forward into what looked like death. The sea divides, crystal walls of salvation rise up on either side, and they march on dry ground. Dry ground is mentioned four times in this chapter. It is as if God wanted this picture to stress one thing: the death and resurrection of Christ provide the solid ground where faith plants its feet.
Egypt tried the same route. The ground held for one people and closed over the other.
The path is open to faith, and there is not a drop of water there. Death is gone, and judgment is gone. It is all over. It is dry ground, and God has made it so. But only the people of faith can walk it. What is dry ground to Israel is sea to everyone else. Let the Egyptians try to follow, and things take their natural course: death and judgment are there. The very thing the believer dreaded becomes his security. Christ is there in the deep. He sees the judgment of God in all its weight and power borne by Christ.
The path did not just appear for Israel. One writer notes who else went through the sea.
So we may say that Jehovah not only made the way through the sea. He also went that way Himself. Israel went through by taking up the way He had made. Here then we clearly have the second picture of the death of Christ given in Israel's history. The first, of course, was the lamb sacrificed on Passover night. This one carries us a step further, because it pictures not only death but resurrection too.
Another writer traces the same line to the cost of clearing that path:
By His death our Shepherd has made a dry path for us through death. The rod of Moses made just such a dry path for Israel through the sea. The "strong east wind" of adversity blew all through the terrible "night" of His distress. It split the way open for us through the waters of death.
They crossed at night, and the walls of water were not dark.
Behind the very last of them was the presence of the Almighty, like a searchlight of enormous power. It was not in their eyes to dazzle them. It was placed so that its light reflected off the glassy walls of water, and it must have lit up their whole way. All that night Israel walked in the light. The enemy, for all their swift chariots, were stumbling in the dark.
The Passover and the crossing are not two pictures of the same thing.
The Passover brought out the thought of the death of Christ FOR us. The crossing of the Red Sea brings out our IDENTIFICATION with that death. The children of Israel were baptised to Moses. Believers are baptised to the death of Christ. They are buried with Him by baptism, and are now free to walk in newness of life.
- Barrier. The sea they dreaded stood between them and freedom. God turned it from a gulf into a road, and the same water walled the enemy out.
- Path. Israel did not make the way. God opened it, and He went that way Himself before they walked it.
- Ground. The chapter repeats "dry ground". It was not a damp escape but firm footing — a picture of Christ's death and resurrection under a believer's feet.
- Faith. The same path was dry land to Israel and open sea to Egypt; only faith can walk where God has cleared the way.
- Baptism. Passover pictures the death of Christ for us; the crossing pictures our identification with that death. Believers are buried with Him and free to walk in newness of life.
And the Egyptians pursued and came after them -- all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots and his horsemen, into the midst of the sea.
Pharaoh's army does not stop at the water's edge. It drives straight into the dry path God opened for Israel, chariots and all. So one question hangs over the verse: how can the same path save one people and bury another?
The Egyptians had just seen the sea open and Israel walk through. That did not slow them. One writer traces their advance to a confidence that saw nothing ahead of it:
Even that pillar of fire did not hold them back. They trusted their own strength, and that trust was worth nothing. They pressed on — straight to a sure and certain doom. 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. All others will be overwhelmed. And yet how many a soul dares to meet death and judgment in its own strength. Let the fate of Pharaoh and his army warn every such soul.
Israel and Egypt walked between the same two walls of water. What made the difference was not the road but who was on it:
The very same waters that formed a wall for God's redeemed formed a grave for Pharaoh. So it always is: those who walk by faith find a path to walk in, while all who merely try to copy them find a grave. Pharaoh was in open, declared hostility to God when he tried to pass through the Red Sea. That takes nothing away from this solemn truth: everyone who tries to imitate the actions of faith will come to shame.
Israel's safe crossing rested on an earlier night, when they put the lamb's blood on their doorposts. Egypt had no such night. One writer sees in that gap a picture of religion without a foundation:
How striking is the Holy Spirit's reference to the Egyptians who tried to cross the Red Sea and drowned. It matches a widespread form of unbelief in the Christian world. People have adopted the idea of salvation, and we may add of heaven. They strive to claim that hope without faith, without Christ, in their natural state — on a deathbed at least. We never read of a single Egyptian sprinkling his doorpost with a lamb's blood. People would like to be saved without confessing their sins, and without owning God's judgment of those sins in the cross of Christ. Yet that judgment is the only righteous ground of their forgiveness. There could have been no triumph for Israel across the Red Sea without the Passover that came first.
This chase pictures something larger. It shows what the human heart is, and where the enemy's hunger takes him:
Pharaoh's actions showed the state of the human heart, and the blindness that can come on people who set themselves in self-will against God and His will. His determined pursuit of God's people only led him and his armies into the place of judgment. They were utterly defeated and overwhelmed in the very place where they had hoped to lay hold of Israel. In the same way, Satan had led on his forces to bring about the death of the Son of God. He led on the powers of this world too, both religious and political. But the very thing they thought was their triumph over the meek and lowly Jesus overthrew Satan and his hosts instead. It also brought judgment on the world that had taken him as its prince.
Egypt's whole army marched in behind Israel. There was a purpose in that:
God let the full power of Satan come out against His people for one purpose: to demolish it for ever. And so He does. Pharaoh, his army and his chariots — all the flower of Egypt — stood drawn up, ready to devour the poor children of Israel.
The crossing was more than a rescue from an army. It pictures a deeper deliverance:
At the Red Sea, God acts in power according to the purposes of His love. So the enemy, hard on the heels of the people, is destroyed with no way out. As a moral picture, the Red Sea is plainly the death and resurrection of Jesus, and of His people in Him. God acted in it to bring them out of death — the death into which He had brought them in Christ. So they are beyond any possibility of the enemy reaching them.
- Pursuit. Pharaoh's army follows Israel into the seabed. Not even the pillar of fire stops them. Self-confidence presses on to certain doom.
- Path. The same water is a wall for the redeemed and a grave for the pursuer. Copying the actions of faith without faith ends in shame.
- Blood. No Egyptian ever sprinkled a doorpost. There is no triumph at the sea without the Passover first. And there is no forgiveness apart from God's judgment of sin at the cross.
- Trap. The enemy entered that place to seize his prey and met his own overthrow. So it was at the cross: Satan's apparent victory was his defeat.
- Distance. God let the enemy's full power gather, then destroyed it for ever. His people came through death, beyond the enemy's reach.
And it came to pass in the morning watch, that Jehovah looked upon the camp of the Egyptians, in the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and embarrassed the camp of the Egyptians.
The Egyptians have chased Israel into the seabed, and all night nothing stops them. Then, before dawn, God does one thing — He looks — and the whole army falls apart.
Israel strikes no blow in this verse. The One who acts does it from inside the cloud.
There is One who has made that cloud His dwelling place, and His look will overthrow all who plot harm against the camp. The finest of Egypt withers under it; Pharaoh's horses and chariots are drowned in the Red Sea before it.
Verse 19 calls Israel's guide an angel. This verse calls Him the LORD. Commentators read the two together and ask who this guide really is.
This passage, chapter 14, and others as well, clearly ascribe divine attributes to Him… Exodus 14 first speaks of Him as an angel, and then identifies Him with Jehovah (compare verse 24 with verse 19). That He is divine is therefore clear. The inference is justified — one drawn by godly students of the Word in every age — that in this angel we have none other than the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, Jehovah.
The cloud that had been shining on Israel all night is the very thing that now troubles Egypt. Nothing about it changed; only which side you stood on.
What gave light to the children of Israel was a cloud and darkness to their enemies. How secure they were, if only they had known it, behind this impenetrable shield of invincible power. No enemy could reach them without first meeting and overcoming God Himself. The blood of the Passover lamb had sheltered them; now divine power shielded them.
The verse fixes the hour: the last stretch of darkness before dawn. One writer puts a clock time on the look, and points to a psalm for what that night was like.
The Lord's look from the pillar of fire and cloud came at about two o'clock in the morning — about the middle of that stormy night (Psalm 77:17-18). Israel had reached the far shore. It was early morning, and God told Moses to stretch out his hand over the sea once more, and the sea returned to its strength.
Others read the timing itself. The look falls in the morning watch, and the sea closes as morning appears.
Notice that it is "in the morning watch" that the Lord looked on the army of the Egyptians and threw it into a panic. Notice this too: the sea came back to its strength when the morning appeared, and the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the middle of the sea. Christ is "raised from the dead by the glory of the Father." Here is the morning for us. God accepted His work. God accepted Him as the representative of His redeemed people, and in Him is now our standing.
One writer sets this beside the night of Jesus' arrest. Jesus steps between His disciples and the men sent to seize them.
On a similar occasion Jesus acts exactly as the cloud and the glory did on the banks of the Red Sea. He comes between the disciples and their pursuers. "If you seek me, let these men go." He defends them. Then, as long before on the edge of Egypt, He looks through the veil and troubles the enemy again. And all this with the same ease and the same authority as in the day of Pharaoh. He only, as it were, looked out again. He only showed Himself, saying, "I am he," and the Egyptians lie on the shore again.
The pillar of fire stood in Egypt's way, and Egypt went in anyway. One writer draws out what that means for anyone facing death.
That pillar of fire did not even hold them back. With empty confidence in their own strength, they pressed on — but to certain doom… They were now sure the fight was hopeless, and would gladly have fled; but it was all too late… The solemn lesson is this: to face the power of death in human confidence means certain destruction. Only the blood-bought people can pass through in safety. There is no escape apart from Christ, who alone has met and overcome death.
- The look. God fights by looking. The One dwelling in the cloud overthrows Egypt's finest without Israel lifting a hand.
- The Looker. Verse 19 calls Israel's guide an angel; verse 24 calls Him the LORD. Commentators identify Him as God the Son.
- The two sides. The same pillar lights Israel and troubles Egypt; to touch God's people, an enemy must first get past God.
- The hour. The look falls in the last watch of a stormy night. The sea closes at daybreak — a morning that speaks of Christ raised, and of our standing in Him.
- The warning. Egypt entered the sea trusting its own strength and never came out. Only the blood-bought pass through.