Exodus 14:19-31 Commentary

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The story of the exodus is a potent motif for shaping the story of oppressed people. In the US context, we know this from the way the story was used in songs written by enslaved people. “Go down Moses and tell old Pharaoh, ‘let my people go.’” Harriet Tubman, who famously led hundreds to safety by way of the Underground Railroad was nicknamed “Grandma Moses.” 

However, on a recent research trip to South Africa, it was also impressed upon me that the white Afrikaners also framed their story in terms of the exodus motif.  A decisive battle at Blood River was referred to as a crossing of the Red Sea. The Afrikaner victory was taken as proof of God’s blessing, of God’s covenant with them, which further entrenched their sense of identity as “God’s chosen people” over against South African tribes, then against the British and then, finally, under apartheid, their status over and against all the black people of South Africa. 

Clearly, the story has power to shape the identity of people but that means we (all Christians but particularly preachers, who are tasked with stewarding the story of God’s people) have a particular responsibility to tell this story rightly.

Commentary

God’s … Army?

Perhaps you, like me, grew up singing a little ditty about being “in the Lord’s army. Yes sir!” Perhaps you, like me, are a grown-up with some side-eye for the militarism of this childhood catechesis. What do we do with the fact that, in this passage and others like it, God does indeed refer to the Israelites as an army?

Though, come to think of it, they aren’t a particularly battle-ready band, are they? Consider that they are, actually, running for their lives.  They are mid-flee when God refers to them as “an army” or “a battalion.” Nothing could prove further from true about them: they are refugees, they are beleaguered after 430 years of slavery, they conned (rather than strong-armed) their neighbors out of goods, they are a “motley crew”/”riff-raff”, women and children alongside the men.  

Even God knows they will freak out if they encounter an enemy people along their route. Check out what God has to say about His “army” in Exodus 13:17. “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, ‘If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.’” That’s a solid vote of no-confidence if I’ve ever heard one. 

Even when they obey God, their actions look like they are lost. God’s concerns are not unfounded. In Exodus 14:10, when God’s people see the cloud of dust being kicked up by the horses and chariots, hear the hoofbeats and clacking of armor, they do not rise up in battle formation. Instead, they turn mutinous as they address their commander-in-chief. “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? … It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”

When God’s “army” find their back against the Red Sea, they prove God’s concern correct with their fearful whining and worrying! In fact, this is how God’s people always act when their back are against a wall.  See the rest of the book of Exodus for proof.

Moses Pastors the People

There are a hundred different ways I could imagine Moses responding with frustration, disgust, sarcasm, hurt and downright anger when the people come at him this way.  In my least pastoral moments I have imagined the kind of speech Moses would have had every right to deliver in that moment. 

But Moses proves to be a better pastor than I am.  In his book, The Pastor as Minor Poet, Rev. Dr. Craig Barnes, exhorts pastors to consider—in every interaction and conversation—what “the thing beneath the thing” might be.  Someone comes at you full of anger, complaint, opposition and your pastoral superpower is not to respond to the thing but, rather, to pause, to breathe and to consider what is going on inside this person underneath the often unpleasant, unattractive surface behavior.  This is what Moses does in Exodus 14:13 when he addresses the real issue. “Do not be afraid.”

Considering the prevalence of this command throughout Scripture and, notably, in the story of God’s people emerging from slavery in the book of Exodus, fear is very often the thing beneath the thing.  But Moses continues with this command: “Stand firm” and then he gives the reason, which is not the ferocity of their battle readiness or the strength of their tactical training or anything about them at all.  God’s people can be brave and stand firm because “You will see the deliverance of the Lord…The Lord will fight for you.”  And that is exactly what we see in this week’s Lectionary reading.

The Lord Fights for Israel

In the first place, The angel or messenger of God who has been traveling as a pillar of cloud ahead of the people retreats and creates a screen between the people and the encroaching army, cloaking God’s people and covering them in their vulnerable state. Then the pillar of cloud separates the darkness on one side and the light on the other.  And yes, if that sounds a bit like the work of God in creation, it is, according the Hebrew scholar, Robert Alter, supposed to. Then the waters split apart, according to the most literal translation of verse 21, like an axe through a cord of wood. The water is being actively held back. And then, one final powerful metaphor is, literally, birthed. The people of God pass through the waters, which has evoked, for some scholars, a birth narrative.  The nation is born through the water.

Safe on dry ground, they turn back just in time to watch the waves crash down on the army that has followed them into the sea. The Israelites crossed on dry ground. They didn’t have chariots or armor, which was their weakness.  Except it was exactly these things that ended up imperiling the advancing army. It is precisely at this point of strength (chariots and armor) that they are lost.  The mud sticks their wheels, the axles break, and their armor weights them down. Their strength becomes their liability. 

While I’m not sure I’ve fully cracked the distinction between what constitutes a right or a wrong use of the exodus motif for framing the story of God’s people, I suspect it has something to do with whose strength is on display.  Guided through dark swamps and forests in, if you believe the biographies of Tubman, often supernatural ways vs. the firepower of European guns over and against Zulu spears demonstrates a different need of divine intervention and the Exodus story can only be rightly understood as a story of God’s intervention. “That day the Lord saved Israel.”