Exodus 14:23 - Forerunner Commentary

Exodus 14:23

Commentaries:

No entry exists in Forerunner Commentary for Exodus 14:23.

Exodus 14:23-28
Excerpted from: The Great Work the Lord Has Done!

Meanwhile the waters formed a wall on the right, and on the left. According to Psalm 78:13, the Lord 'made the waters stand up like a heap.'

Sometime during the morning watch, the Lord looked down. In Scripture, this look is never just visual, but a demonstration of some wrath or mercy on God's part. From the pillar of fire and cloud, the Lord looked down at the Egyptian army as they began to pursue Israel across the recently formed valley in the sea, and threw it into confusion.

'God is not the author of confusion,' so the confusion came from the Egyptians themselves, whose minds became terrified leading to their confused state. God troubled the Egyptians with panic attacks. The army panicked, and became disarrayed, when God's presence became apparent, and they realized that they were up against a superior Challenger, and an overwhelming force.

This look of God took on concrete proportions, because the pillar of fire must have suddenly lit up the sky, with such a flash in the darkness that the chariots careened against one another. The horses were probably one on top of the other, as they scrambled to get away, and the chariots were probably tipping over. Meanwhile there was also unleashed such a spectacular display of thunder, lightning, rain, and earthquake, that the boldest and most arrogant of Egypt's charioteers were struck with terror.

By this time, the thoroughly distracted Egyptians had another problem: God made the chariot wheels come off, or jam against one another, so that the Egyptians had difficulty driving. They had enough, and were willing to forget about Israel altogether, but it was too late.

The Lord had begun His fight against Egypt as was promised. Israel had nothing to do at this point other than stand still and watch the victory won on their behalf; because with the upraised hand of Moses, the walls of water cascaded toward each other to resume their place, just as dawn broke.

Pharaoh lost all the men and chariots that he had committed to that engagement. The text never says that Pharaoh himself died here, even though Psalms 136:15, records that God "overthrew Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea."It leaves some doubt as to whether he was actually killed, or not. I have a note in my Bible, from the class at Ambassador College, Old Testament Survey; it says that Pharaoh lived for sixteen years after the destruction of his army. So, it is questionable, it is not firmly a fact, of whether he lived or not, but it appears in history that he lived for another sixteen years. But, when you look at Psalm 136:15, it seems to indicate that everyone died. Either way, he got the point that God is Sovereign.

Exodus 14:21-25
Excerpted from: Escape From Box Canyon

What this did was force both sides to go through with it: The Egyptians with attacking, and the Israelites with going across—just as God wanted to occur, so that His plan could move forward. There is also some symbolism in that the pillar was dark on the Egyptian side, which is an indication of wrath and judgment, darkness of death, and on the Israelite's side it was light. It says of Jesus, "In Him was light." Well, light stands for good, or favor. So He was comforting His people and giving the other side the willies. (You might want to write down Nahum 1:7-8—where it says that, in a nutshell, about His approach to the Assyrians.)

Now this stupendous miracle that occurred is unexplainable by natural means. If you go into a commentary and they start telling you, "Well, the wind did this, and. . ."—do not believe it, because there is no way a wind could pile up water on opposite sides of the people of Israel. That is what it says. It was a wall to their left and to their right. There is no wind in this world that could do it. Now, if it did, it would blow the Israelites and all their baggage to kingdom come. You have this 500,000 mile-per-hour wind, piling up water; and here are these Israelites yelling in terror and disaster. They would never make it.

But God piled that water up somehow on the one side, and He piled it up on the other; and then He sent a wind down the center, to dry the ground. And I think that the reason why Moses wrote it this way is because to them it looked like it was all one process. They could not explain it; but they felt the wind, drying the ground. So Moses stuck it in there, as whatever kind of an explanation he could come up with. He knew what it was though. The east wind made the sea into dry land.

At some point, God lifted the pillar of cloud; and the Egyptians pursued into the Red Sea. Now here (where most conservative scholars think the crossing was), the Red Sea was probably six to eight miles wide—at this point. So there was plenty of room to get quite a lot of Israelites (on the one end) and the Egyptian army (pursuing from the other end), and to get the entire Egyptian army between the walls of water before they came smacking down. This was a very large miracle that occurred. God had that water stand up in a heap, on both sides, for six to eight miles.

God causes the wheels of the chariots to fall off, and the Egyptians are stuck. So they begin to flee.

Exodus 14:23-28
Excerpted from: Psalms: Book One (Part Two)

So while the Israelites walk across this dry causeway, God stays behind to harry the Egyptians, to slow them down, to keep them from plunging into the sea after the stragglers. He made their chariots hard to drive, and some commentators think that perhaps God allowed some of the water to start seeping back in along the road that they were taking—the dry causeway was now getting wet again—and it was causing them to drive in mud. And the mud, being sticky and all that way mud is when it starts to get deep, they could not drive their chariots quickly and it would very easily allow the wheels to pop off the axles.

He could have done it another way, that is just what they are thinking, to try a naturalistic way of working. It might have been that He just went down there with a bunch of angels and said, "Hey, start popping wheels," and all these chariots just fell down in the dirt and could not go anywhere. They were sleds now. Maybe, maybe not. But it is interesting that He went back there and He kind of had fun confusing that Egyptian army. He was going to show them, each individual Egyptian in that army, that he was at God's mercy at any time because He was in control of this situation.

He made the horses rear and balk. He put fear into the men and they soon became aware that pursuing Israel was a bad idea, but they were already between the walls of water, and when they came to this decision that they needed to get out of there, they turned and they fled as fast as they could back toward the western shore. But the Hebrew says that when they turned to flee back west, that the water began coming back in from the west, in their faces, so that they were here marching east, God harries them, they turn around to face the west to get out, and they could see the walls of water just bending in over there fellows who were in front of them, and the wave came right at them, in their faces. There was no escape. So it says there none lived to take the news back to the capital city, that the entire army was dead. "Snap" just like that. All those beautiful 600 chariots, all the other ones that were not as beautiful, all the horseman, all the horses, all the soldiers, everyone dead, not a one left standing, gone.

Exodus 14:23-24
Excerpted from: Baptized in the Sea

That would mean that God was in the midst of Israel, and He looked out through the cloud and the pillar of fire. It is just kind of interesting to think of that, because remember that it says elsewhere that God walks through the midst of the camp. So He was with them in the camp; and He looked out, then, at the Egyptians behind the Israelites.

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