Lecture V: The Exodus (part 2)
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D.
The deliverance, in its essential features, is the like-
ness of all such deliverances. "When the tale
of bricks is doubled then comes Moses."
This is the proverb which has sustained the Jewish
nation throughout many a long oppression. The truth
contained in it, the imagery of the Exodus, have
doubtless been more than the types, they have often
been the sustaining causes and consolations, of the
many successful struggles which from that day to this
the oppressed have waged against the oppressor. But
that which is peculiar in the story of the Exodus is
the mode by which it was effected. First, it was not
a mere case of ordinary insurrection of a slave popu-
lation against their masters. The Egyptian version
of the event represents it as a dread, an aversion
entertained by the oppressors toward the oppressed
as towards an accursed and polluted people. It was
a mutual hatred. The king, according to the con-
stant Egyptian tradition, was troubled by dreams, and
commanded by oracles to rid himself of the nation
of lepers. And this, from another point of view, is
also the prevalent sentiment of the Egyptians, as
given in the Sacred writers. "Rise up, and get you
forth from among my people. . . . Egypt was
glad at their departing – for they were afraid of
them."
And it is impossible, as we read the description of
the Plagues, not to feel how much of force
is added to it by a knowledge of the peculiar
customs and character of the country in which they
occurred. It is not an ordinary river that is turned
into blood; it is the sacred, beneficent, solitary Nile,
the very life of the state and of the people, in its
streams and canals and tanks, and vessels of wood
and vessels of stone, then, as now, used for the filtra-
tion of the delicious water from the sediment of the
river-bed. It is not an ordinary nation that is struck
by the mass of putrefying vermin lying in heaps by
the houses, the villages, and the fields, or multiplying
out of the dust of the desert sands on each side of
the Nile valley. It is the cleanliest of all the ancient
nations, clothed in white linen, anticipating, in their
fastidious delicacy and ceremonial purity, the habits
of modern and northern Europe. It is not the ordi-
nary cattle that died in the field, or ordinary fish that
died in the river, or ordinary reptiles that were over-
come by the rod of Aaron. It is the sacred goat of
Mendes, the ram of Ammon, the calf of Heliopolis,
the bull of Apis, the crocodile of Ombos, the carp of
Latopolis. It is not an ordinary land of which the
flax and the barley, and every green thing in the
trees, and every herb of the field are smitten by the
two great calamities of storm and locust. It is the
garden of the ancient Eastern world, — the long line
of green meadow and cornfield, and groves of palm
and sycamore and fig-tree, from the Cataracts to the
Delta, doubly refreshing from the desert which it in-
tersects, doubly marvellous from the river whence it
springs. If these things were calamities anywhere,
they were truly "signs and wonders" — speaking signs
and oracular wonders — in such a land as "the land
of Ham." In whatever way we unite the Hebrew
and Egyptian accounts, there can be no doubt
that the Exodus was a crisis in Egyptian as well as
in Hebrew history, "a nail stuck into the coffin of
the Egyptian monarchy."
But, secondly, the Israelite annals, unlike the rec-
ords of any other nation, in ancient or modern times,
which has thrown off the yoke of slavery, claim no
merit, no victory of their own. There is no Marathon,
no Regillus, no Tours, no Morgarten. All is from
above, nothing from themselves. In whatever propor-
tions the natural and supernatural are intermin-
gled, this result equally remains. The locusts, the
flies, the murrain, the discolored river, the storm, the
darkness of the sandy wind, the plague, are calamities
natural to Egypt, though rare, and exhibited here in
aggravated and terrible forms. But not the less are
they the interventions of a Power above the power
of man, — not the less did they call the mind of the
Israelite from dwelling on his own strength and glory,
to the mighty Hand and the outstretched Arm, on
which alone, through subsequent history, he was
to lean. It is in the final issue of the Exodus that
this most clearly appears, and here we can approach
more nearly to the events as they actually presented
themselves; especially with the additional light thrown
upon it by the allusions in the Psalms, by the parallel
story of Josephus, an by the customs through which
it was commemorated in after-times.
There are some days of which the traces left on
the mind of a nation are so deep that the
events themselves seem to live on long after
they have been numbered with the past. Such was
the night of the month Nisan in the eighteenth cen-
tury before the Christian era. "It is a night to be
much observed unto the Lord, for bringing them
out of the land of Egypt; this is that night of the
Lord to be observed of the children of Israel in
their generations." Dimly we see and hear, in the
darkness and the confusion of that night, the stroke
which at last broke the heart of the king and made
him let Israel go. "At midnight the Lord smote all
the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-
born of the captive that was in the dungeon; and
all the first-born of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in
the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyp-
tians; and there was a great cry in Egypt," — the
loud, frantic, funereal wail characteristic of the whole
nation, — "for there was not a house where there was
not one dead." In the Egyptian accounts this de-
struction was described as effected by an incursion
of the Arabs. The Jewish Psalmist ascribes it to the
sudden visitation of the plague. "He spared not their
soul from death, but gave their life over unto the
pestilence." Egyptian and Israelite each regarded
it as a divine judgment on the worship, no less than
the power, of Egypt. "The Egyptians buried their
first-born whom the Lord had smitten; upon their
gods also did the Lord execute judgment."
But whilst of the more detailed effect of that night
on Egypt we know nothing, for its effects on Israel
it might almost be said that we need not go back to
any written narrative. It still moves and breathes
amongst us.
Amongst the various festivals of the Jewish Church,
one only (till the institution of those which
commemorated the much later deliverances
from Haman and from Antiochus Epiphanes) was dis-
tinctly historical. In the feast of Pesach, Pascha,
or Passover, the scene of the flight of the Israelites,
its darkness, its hurry, its confusion, was acted year
by year, as in a living drama. In part it is still so
acted throughout the Jewish race; in all its essential
features (some of which have died out everywhere else)
it is enacted, in the most lively form, by the solitary
remnant of that race which, under the name of Sa-
maritan, celebrates the whole Paschal sacrifice, year
by year, on the summit of Mount Gerizim. Each
householder assembled his family round him; the feast
was within the house; there was no time or place
for priest or sacred edifice, — even after the establish-
ment of the sanctuary at Jerusalem this vestige of
the primitive or the irregular celebration of that night
continued, and not in the Temple courts, but in the
upper chamber of the private houses, was the room
prepared where the Passover was to be eaten. The
animal slain and eaten on the occasion was itself a
memorial of the pastoral state of the people. The
shepherds of Goshen, with their flocks and herds,
whatever else they could furnish for a hasty meal,
would at least have a lamb or a kid, — "a male of
"the first year from the sheep or from the goats."
They struck its blood on the door-posts of the house
as a sign of their deliverance. At Gerizim the Samar-
itan community rushed forward, and, as the blood flows
from the throat of the slaughtered lamb, they dip
their fingers in the stream; and each man, woman,
and child, even to the child in arms, is marked on
the forehead with the red stain. On the cruciform
wooden spit — this we know from Justin Martyr was
the practice in ancient times, and the Christian spec-
tator on Gerizim starts as he sees it at this day —
on the cruciform spit the lamb is left, after the manner
of Eastern feasts, to be roasted whole during the re-
maining hours of the day.
Night falls; the stars come out; the bright moon
is in the sky: the household gathers round; and then
takes place the hasty meal, of which every part is
marked by the almost frantic haste of the first cele-
bration, when Pharaoh's messengers were expected
every instant to break in with the command, "Get
you forth from among my people; Go! Begone!"
The guests of each household at the moment of the
meal rose from their sitting and recumbent posture,
and stood round the table on their feet. Their feet,
usually bare within the house, were shod as if for a
journey. Each member of the household, even the
women, had staffs in their hands, as if for an imme-
diate departure; the long Eastern garments of the
men were girt up, for the same reason, round their
loins. The roasted lamb was torn to pieces, each
snatching and grasping in his eager fingers the mor-
sel which he might not else have time to eat. Not
a fragment is left in the morning, which will find
them gone and far away. The cakes of bread which
they broke and ate were tasteless from the want of
leaven, which there had been no leisure to prepare;
and, as on that fatal midnight the "took their dough
before it was leavened, their kneading troughs being
bound up in their clothes on their shoulders," so the
recollection of this characteristic incident was stamped
into the national memory by the prohibition of every
kind of leaven or ferment, for seven whole days dur-
ing the celebration of the feast — the feast, as it was
from this cause named, of unleavened bread. And,
finally, in the subsequent union of later and earlier
usages, the thanksgiving for their deliverance was
always present. The reminiscence of their bondage
was kept up by the mess of bitter herbs, which gave
a relish to the supper; and that bitter cup again was
sweetened by the festive character which ran through
the whole transaction, and gave it in later genera-
tions what in its first institution it could hardly have
had, — its full social and ecclesiastical aspect; the wine-
cups of blessing, and the long-standing hymn from
the 113th to the 118th Psalm, of which the thrilling
parts must always have been those which sing how
"Israel came out of Egypt;" how "not unto them,
not unto them, but unto Jehovah's name was the
praise to be given for ever and ever."
So lived on for centuries the tradition of the De-
liverance from Egypt; and so it lives on still, chiefly
in the Hebrew race, but, in part, in the Christian
Church also. Alone of all the Jewish festivals, the
Passover has outlasted the Jewish polity, has over-
leaped the boundary between the Jewish and Chris-
tian communities. With the other festivals of the
Israelites we have no concern: even the name of the
weekly festivals of the Sabbath only continues amongst
us by a kind of recognized solecism, and its day has
been studiously changed. But the name of the Pas-
chal feast in the largest proportion of Christendom is
still, unaltered, the name of the greatest Christian
holiday. The Paschal Lamb, in deed or in word, is
become to us symbolical of the most sacred of all
events. The Easter full moon, which has so long
regulated the calendars of the Christian world, is, one
may say, the lineal successor of the bright moonlight
which shed its rays over the palm-groves of Egypt on
the fifteenth night of the month Nisan; Jew and Chris-
tian, at that season, both celebrate what is to a cer-
tain extent a common festival; even the most sacred
ordinance of the Christian religion is, in its outward
form, a relic of the Paschal Supper, accompanied by
hymn and thanksgiving, in the upper chamber of a
Jewish household. The nature of the bread which is
administered in one large section of the Christian
Church bears witness, by its round unleavened wafers,
to its Jewish origin, and to the disorder of the hour
when it was first eaten. And as, in the course
of history, ecclesiastical as well as civil, events the
most remote and the most trivial constantly ramify
into strange and unlooked-for consequences, — the
attempt of the Latin Church to perpetuate, and of
the Eastern Church to cast off, this historical con-
nection with the peculiar usage of the ancient people
from which they both sprang, became one of the
chief causes or pretexts of their final rupture from
each other.
It is difficult to conceive the migration of a whole
nation under such circumstances. This diffi-
culty, amongst others, has introduced the well-known
French commentator on the Exodus, with every
desire of maintaining the letter of the narrative, to
reduce the number of the text from 600,000 to 600
armed men. The great German scholar defends the
correctness of the original numbers. In illustration
of the event, a sudden retreat is recorded of a whole
nomadic people, — 400,000 Tartars, — under cover of a
single night, from the confines of Russia into their
native deserts, as late as the close of the last century.
We may leave the question to the critical analysis of
the text and of the probabilities of the case, and con-
fine ourselves to what remains equally true under
either hypothesis. Those who have seen the start of
the great caravans of pilgrims in the East may form
some notion of the silence and order with which even
very large masses break up from their encampments,
and, as in this instance, usually in the darkness and
the cool of the night, set out on their journey, the
torches flaring before them, the train of camels and
asses spreading far and wide through the broad level
desert.
From Rameses the first start was made. This the
Septuagint fixed on the north-east skirts of
the Delta, and to the same locality we are directed
by the most recent discoveries. All that follows is
wrapt in too great an obscurity to justify any de-
tailed description. The spots are indeed named with
an exactness which provokes and tantalizes in propor-
tion to the certainty with which they must once have
been known, and the uncertainty which has rested
upon them since. Still the general direction of the
flight, and the general features of the resting-places
may be gathered. Southeastward they went, — not
by the short and direct road to Palestine, but by the
same circuitous route, through the wilderness of the
Red Sea, which their ancestors had followed in bear-
ing away the body of Jacob, as now they were bear-
ing off, with different thoughts and aims, the coffin
which contained the embalmed remains of Joseph.
the nomenclature of the several halts indicates some-
thing of the country through which they passed. The
first was "Succoth," — the place of "booths"
or "leafy huts," — the last spot where they could have
found the luxuriant foliage of tamarisk and sycamore
and palm, "branches of thick trees to make booths,
"as it is written." How deeply that first resting-place
was intended to be sunk into their remembrance may
be gathered from the fact, that this, rather than any
of the numerous halts in their later wanderings, was
selected to be represented after their entrance into
Palestine, as a memorial of their stay in the
wilderness. The Feast of Tabernacles, or Suc-
coth, was a feast not of tents, — but of huts woven
together from "the boughs of goodly trees, branches
of palm-trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and
willows of the brook," that "all their generations
might know that the Lord made the children of
Israel to dwell in booths, when He brought them up
out of the land of Egypt." It was the first step
that involved the whole; it was the first step, there-
fore, the last lingering on the confines of Egyptian
vegetation and civilization, the first step into the wan-
dering state of the desert, that was to be hence-
forward commemorated. The next halt was
Etham, on "the edge of the wilderness." Cities they
had left behind them at Rameses; the groves and
villages they had left behind at Succoth; the green
land of Egypt, cut off as with a knife from the hard
desert tract on which they now entered, they left
behind at Etham. They were now fairly in the wil-
derness.
And now the command "to turn," not to go
straight forward, as they would have expected, round
the head of the gulf, but "to turn" and "encamp be-
tween Migdol and the sea, beside the sea, before
Pi-hahiroth, over against Baal-zephon." Here is ex-
actly a case of that precision which guaran-
tees to us that the spot was once well known,
yet which now serves us but little. Could we but
discover the site of the pastures of Pi-haroth (such
must be the meaning of the Egyptian word) or the
sanctuary of Typhon (such must be the meaning of
Baal-zephon), the controversy respecting the locality
and the nature of the passage of the Red Sea woul
be at an end. As it is, we are led in two opposite
directions, — on the one hand, the extreme northern
point (beyond the spot where the present gulf ter-
minates, but to which it must anciently have extend-
ed) is indicated by the mention of Migdol, which can
hardly be any other than the well-known town or
tower called by the Greeks Magdôlon; on the other
hand, the narrative of Josephus speaks distinctly of
"the mountain" as that which "entangled and shut
them in," which can be no other than the lofty
range of Jebel Attâka, the Mountain of Deliver-
ance, south of the modern Suez. But whichever of
these it be, the narrative compels us to look for the
passage somewhere near the head of the then gulf,
whence the width would be such as to allow the host
to pass over in a single night, and the waters to be
parted by the means described, namely, by a strong
wind. The ancient theory adopted by the rabbinical
and early Christian writers, that the Israelites merely
performed a circuit in the sea and returned again to
the Egyptian shores, will now be maintained by no
one who has any regard to the dignity of the story
or the grandeur of the event described. Dismissing,
therefore, these geographical considerations, we may
fix our minds on the essential features of this great
deliverance, as it will be acknowledged without dis-
pute by every reader.
The Israelites were encamped on the western shore
of the Red Sea, when suddenly a cry of alarm ran
through the vast multitude. Over the ridges of the
desert hills were seen the well-known horses, the ter-
rible chariots of the Egyptian host: "Pharaoh pursued
after the children of Israel, and they were sore
afraid."
"They were sore afraid;" and in that terror and
perplexity the sun went down behind the huge moun-
tain-range which rose on their rear, and cut off their
return to Egypt; and the dark night fell over the
waters of the sea which rolled before them and cut
off their advance into the desert. So closed in upon
them that evening; where were they when the morn-
ing broke over the hills of Arabia? where were they,
and where were their enemies?
They stood in safety on the further shore; and
the chariots, and the horsemen, and the host of Pha-
raoh had vanished in the waters. Let us calmly con-
sider, so far as our knowledge will allow us, the ex-
tent of such deliverance, effected at a moment so
critical.
First, we must observe what may be called the
whole change of situation. They had
passed in that night from Africa to Asia;
they had crossed one of the great boundaries which
divide the quarters of the world; a thought always
thrilling, how much more when we reflect on what a
transition it involved to them. Behind the African
hills, which rose beyond the Red Sea, lay the strange
land of their exile and bondage, — the land of Egypt,
with its mighty river, its immense buildings, its mon-
ster-worship, its grinding tyranny, its overgrown civ-
ilization. This they had left to revisit no more: the
Red Sea flowed between them; "the Egyptians whom
they saw yesterday they will see no more again
for ever." And before them stretched the level plains
of the Arabian desert, the desert where their fathers
and their kindred had wandered in former times,
where their great leader had fed the flocks of Jethro,
through which they must advance onwards till they
reach the Land of Promise. Further, this
change of local situation was at once a change
of moral condition. From slaves they had become
free; from an oppressed tribe they had become an
independent nation. It is their deliverance from sla-
very. It is the earliest recorded instance of a great
national emancipation. In later times Religion has
been so often and so exclusively associated with ideas
of order, of obedience, of submission to authority, that
it is well to be occasionally reminded that it has had
other aspects also. This, the first epoch of our relig-
ious history, is, in its original historical significance,
the sanctification, the glorification of national inde-
pendence and freedom. Whatever else was to suc-
ceed to it, this was the first stage of the progress of
the Chosen People. And when in the Christian Scrip-
tures and in the Christian Church we find the Pas-
sage of the Red Sea taken as the likeness of the
moral deliverance from sin and death, — when we
read in the Apocalypse of the vision of those who
stand victorious on the shores of "the glassy sea
mingled with fire, having the harps of God and
singing the songs of Moses the servant of God, and
the song of the Lamb," — these are so many sacred
testimonies to the importance, to the sanctity of free-
dom, to the wrong and misery of injustice, op-
pression, and tyranny. The word "Redemption," which
has now a sense far holier and higher, first entered
into the circle of religious ideas at the time when
God "redeemed His people from the house of bond-
age."
But it was not only the fact but the mode of their
deliverance which made this the event so remarkable in
itself, in its applications, and in its lasting con-
sequences. We must place it before us, if
possible, not as we conceive it from pictures and from
our own imaginations, but as in the words of the
Sacred narrative, illustrated by the Psalmist, and by
the commentary of Josephus and Philo. The Passage,
as thus described, was effected not in the calmness
and clear of daylight, but in the depth of mid-
night amidst the roar of the hurricane which caused
the sea to go back — amidst a darkness lit up only
by the broad glare of the lightning as "the Lord
looked out" from the thick darkness of the cloud.
"The waters saw Thee, O God, the waters saw Thee
and were afraid; the depths also were troubled. The
clouds poured out water; the air thundered; Thine
arrows went abroad; the voice of Thy thunder was
heard round about; the lightning shone upon the
ground; the earth was moved and shook withal."
We know not, they knew not, by what precise means
the deliverance was wrought: we know not by what
precise track through the gulf the passage was effected.
We know not, and we need not know; the obscurity,
the mystery, here as elsewhere, was part of the les-
son. "God's way was in the sea, and His paths in
the great waters, and His footsteps were not known."
All that we see distinctly is, that through this dark
and terrible night, with the enemy pressing close be-
hind, and the driving sea on either side, He "led His
people like sheep by the hand of Moses and Aaron."
Long afterwards was the recollection preserved in
all their religious imagery. Living as they did apart
from all maritime pursuits, yet their poetry, their
devotion, abounds with expressions which can be
traced back only to this beginning of their national
history. They had been literally "baptized unto
Moses in the cloud and in the sea." And, as in the
case of the early Christians, the plunge into baptis-
mal bath was never forgotten, so even in the dry in-
land valleys of Palestine, danger and deliverance were
always expressed by the visions of the sea and storm.
"All thy waves and storms are gone over me."
"The springs of water were seen, and the foundations
of the round world were discovered at Thy chiding,
O Lord, at the blasting of the breath of Thy dis-
pleasure. . . . . He drew me out of many waters."
Their whole national existence was a thanksgiving, a
votive tablet, for their deliverance in and from and
through the Red Sea.
But another and a still more abiding impression
was that this deliverance — the first and great-
est in their history — was effected, not by their
own power, but by the power of God. There are
moments in the life both of men and of nations, both
of the world and of the Church, when vast blessings
are gained, vast dangers averted, through our own
exertions, — by the sword of the conqueror, by the
genius of the statesman, by the holiness of the saint.
Such, in Jewish history, was the conquest of Palestine
by Joshua, the deliverance wrought by Gideon, by
Samson, and by David. Such, in Christian history,
were the revolutions effected by Clovis, by Charle-
magne, by Alfred, by Bernard, and by Luther. But
there are moments of still higher interest, of still more
solemn feeling, when deliverance is brought about not
by any human energy, but by causes beyond our own
control. Such, in Christian history, are the raising
of the siege of Leyden and the overthrow of the
Armada, and such, above all, was the Passage of the
Red Sea.
Whatever were the means employed by the Al-
mighty — whatever the path which He had made for Him-
self in the great waters, it was to Him, and not to
themselves, that the Israelites were compelled to look
as the source of their escape. "Stand still and see
the salvation of Jehovah," was their only duty.
Jehovah hath triumphed gloriously," was their only
song of victory. It was a victory into which no feel-
ing of pride or self-exaltation could enter. It was a
fit opening of a history and of a character, which was
to be specially distinguished from that of other races
by its constant and direct dependence on the Supreme
Judge and Ruler of the world. Greece and Rome
could look back with triumph to the glorious days
when they had repulsed their invaders, had risen on
their tyrants, or driven out their kings. But the
birthday of Israel, — the birthday of the religion, of
the liberty, of the nation, of Israel, — was the Passage
of the Red Sea; — the likeness in this, as in so many
other respects, of the yet greater events in the begin-
nings of the Christian Church, of which it has been
long considered the anticipation and the emblem.
It was the commemoration, not of what man has
wrought for God, but of what God has wrought for
man. No baser thoughts, no disturbing influences,
could mar the overwhelming sense of thankfulness with
which, as if after a hard-won battle, the nation found
its voice in the first Hebrew melody, in the first burst
of national poetry, when Moses and the children of
Israel met on the Arabian shore, met "Miriam the
Prophetess, the sister of Aaron," the third member,
the eldest born, of that noble family, whose name
now first appears in the history of the Church, after-
wards to become so renowned through its Grecian
and European form of Maria and Mary. She came
forth, as was the wont of Hebrew women after some
great victory, to meet the triumphant host, with her
Egyptian timbrels, and the dances of her country-
women, — Miriam, who had watched her infant brother
by the riverside, and now greeted him as the deliv-
erer of her people, or rather, if we may with rever-
ence say so, greeted the Divine Deliverer, by the new
and awful Name, now first clearly proclaimed to her
family and her nation:
"Sing unto JEHOVAH, for He is 'lifted up on high, on high.'
The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea.
My strength and song is Jah, and He is become my salvation.
He is my God and I will praise him; my father's God, and I will exalt
Him.
JEHOVAH is a man of war, JEHOVAH is His name.
Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath He cast into the sea.
His chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea.
The depths covered them, they sank to the bottom as a stone.
Thy right hand, JEHOVAH, is become glorious in power: Thy right hand,
JEHOVAH, hath dashed in pieces the enemy.
And in the greatness of Thy height Thou hast overthrown them that rose
up against Thee.
Thou sentest forth Thy wrath, which consumed them as stubble:
And with the blast of Thy nostrils the waters were gathered together:
The floods stood upright as a heap; the depths were congealed in the heart
of the sea:
The enemy said I will pursue, I will devastate, I will divide the spoil: my
desire shall be satisfied upon them: I will draw my sword, my hand
shall destroy them.
Thou didst blow with Thy blast; the sea covered them: they sank like lead
in the mighty waters.
Who is like unto Thee, JEHOVAH, amongst the gods? Who is like unto
Thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?
JEHOVAH shall reign for ever and ever."
from The History of the Jewish Church, Vol. I : Abraham to Samuel,
Lecture V: The Exodus
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1879, pp. 129-147
Posted Jun 16, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC · edited
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