THE SEA CROSSING
After the Israelites had encamped at the sea, a strong east wind blew until sometime before dawn. ceasing sometime during the morning watch. The Israelites then marched into the sea bed, which the wind had dried, and marched across the sea between two walls of water. What can we infer from this? Well, first, wherever the 'sea' was located, they crossed from the west unto the east. Second, if the wind dried the sea bed, the wind was hot, or at least warm; however, if the sea bed was frozen, then one might speak of it was dry in a sense, I think what probably happened is that the cold jet stream dipped down into the sea and forced a path through it, so that the walls of water on each side were actually walls of ice - one could still call them walls of water. It did not dry the whole sea, or freeze the whole sea, but just a limited path through the sea, which was held back by two temporary, but strong, blockwalls of ice. When the Israelites reached the eastern shore, Moses held up his arm, presumably with the road in his hand(s). The sea had already started to breach the walls of ice at the base, and this is why the Egyptians chariots became locked in mud. When a glacier starts leaking water at the base, it is only a matter of time before the glacier cracks. Then when the sun came up, due East, Moses was silhouetted against the sun. In ancient Egyptian theology, after death, the soul takes a journey through the underworld, where it is attacked by various inimical spirits. and only the righteous survive the journey, and attain to eternal life,or the second resurrection - or something like that. It's been a while since I studied this. The sun then began to melt the ice, and the sea flowed back to its normal depth, catching the Egyptians. This is a sufficient interpretation. It could be dramatized a bit by positing that Moses was standing on a hill, so that the rays of the sun rising behind the hill first fell first on the western shore. If that shore was also a rocky cove, or inlet, perhaps with limestone or quartzite walls that reflected the sun back onto the sea. then that could be put into the pot of explanation as to why the westernmost walls of ice melted first. I also get the impression from the text that the sea did more than just flow back smoothly to its normal depth. I believe that the waves crashed against the shore,and that the Egyptians and their chariots were tossed and turned upside down. It doesn't feel like a shallow lake, much less a swamp, so I assume that the crossed the Red Sea at some place from east to west on a relatively short crossing. If not the Red Sea, will any other qualifying sea please stand up, and tell us your name? I suppose that when the Israelites “saw the Egyptian dead on the shore of the sea,” it was on the western shore. This, and the fact that the Egyptians could probably see Moses raise his arm, implies that they were not out of sight of each other. and hence that the path through the sea was straight, and not too long. Interestingly, the Egyptians realized, from a purely physical condition - the wheels of their chariots becoming locked, or sticky - perhaps from mud - that this demonstrated a divine intervention on the side of the Israelites - they did not think it was 'just' natural. Of course,they had just experienced the Ten Plagues. They they decided to turn back; this was not going to be a suicide mission. However. as it turned out, it was. Lesson learned too late - but that's probably the norm.
