NOTES for Exo 13:17-14:31

The crossing of the Red Sea always serves for unbelieving people as a direct indication that the Bible tells fairy tales that cannot exist in principle. At the same time, the miracle does not consist in the fact that the sea water parted, exposing the bottom. Such phenomena still happen in these places under a particular wind direction. Miraculous salvation is most often not an impossible and incredible event, but a possible one that happened at the needed time in the needed place.

Moreover, here we see such a response of God to Moses' plea as one would never find in an impersonal and indifferent force or energy, nor in sugary pictures depicting an old man with a long white beard. God says to Moses: "...why do you cry to Me? tell the children of Israel to go forward." This is the foundation of the miracle - in the personal and close relationship between God and Moses and in Moses' trust. One can stay in place and keep crying out, but to live, one has to get up and go on.

The Hebrews' departure from Egypt is a true miracle, a miracle completely unexpected for the Egyptians. The point is that Moses immediately led the people in a direction completely different from where everyone thought he would go: not to Beersheba, where there was an old Yahwist sanctuary and where sacrifices could be offered to Yahweh and Passover could be celebrated. Instead of leading the people east and then north along the coastal road, he turns southeast toward the border, to the place where the Suez Canal is now, and where at that time there was a whole chain of lagoons connected partly with the Mediterranean and partly with the Red Sea. This chain of lagoons was called the Reed Sea, the very sea whose crossing the Book of Exodus describes (in the Synodal translation the Reed Sea is called the Red Sea). It is there, to the Reed Sea, that Moses leads his people.

The Egyptians understood that something unplanned had happened, the very thing they feared: the people had moved not where they had been permitted to go, but toward the border, clearly moving in order to leave the country. During the Exodus, Beersheba was on Egyptian territory, but Sinai never was, at least not in antiquity. No wonder the Egyptian border guard, made up of light chariots and cavalry, immediately set out after the Hebrews to keep them from leaving and blocked the fugitives in the area of the Bitter Lakes, where the Reed Sea was at its narrowest.

When, at what moment, does Moses decide to leave the country? It is hard to say exactly. It is possible that he already knew this when he called the people to celebrate Passover. More than that, however, he still did not know exactly by what route he would lead the people out of Egypt. Here he simply had to follow God, and Moses understands this even when the situation appeared completely hopeless, when the Egyptians had blocked the people in the area of the Bitter Lakes.

That is when the miracle happened, the one neither the Hebrews nor the Egyptians expected: a strong wind blew the water out of the Bitter Lakes, temporarily exposing the bottom, which was a sticky salty muck. Walking through that muck was not easy, but neither chariots nor riders could move through it faster than a person on foot. An effective pursuit did not work out; the gap between the departing Hebrews and the Egyptians pursuing them inevitably had to remain until they reached firm ground. The Hebrews stepped onto it first, and then the wind died down. The water rushed back to its usual place, covering the Egyptians who had been pursuing the Hebrews. Egypt was behind them, and ahead lay freedom and the desert.

Freedom! This is the main miracle that took place at the Red Sea: behind the Israelites ended the fertile land of slavery, and ahead opened the desert of freedom. More than once they will regret choosing this path, because freedom and death always walk side by side. All the other miracles - the pillars of fire and smoke, the journey through the sea on dry land, and everything that awaits Israel in the desert - are only testimony that God is near.

This will not keep them from doubting and grumbling at any convenient moment. But it is precisely in this, in the very possibility of believing or not believing (God, not miracles), that salvation from slavery is realized, where everything before had been reliable and constant.

But now before Moses and his companions there is only desert and sky: ideal conditions for understanding much and deciding much. God invites us also to make this step from slavery to freedom, from certainty to faith.

If we follow the logic of the text given in the Book of Exodus and placed by its author in Moses' mouth, the custom of dedicating everything firstborn to God and redeeming the firstborn child goes back to the celebration of Pesach that took place on the eve of the Exodus. It is hard to say how ancient the custom itself is. Moses may not have been establishing it, but only reminding the people of something once known and now, in Egypt, thoroughly forgotten.

In any case, its connection with the understanding of the feast reflected in the Book of Exodus is obvious. Pesach itself is understood here as a feast of life, or more precisely, as a feast of the triumph of life over death. God's life, because it is God who frees His people from the sword of the angel of death who struck the houses of the Egyptians. Life belongs to God, and to Him alone: such is the meaning of the custom established or restored by Moses.

If so, then it is clear: the first fruits, the first offspring of the livestock, everything first, belongs to God. This is not only so that, as people commonly think, He would then sanctify what follows: the fruits that come after the firstfruits, or the livestock born after the first offspring. Life simply has to return to its first source, to the One who gave it. The only question is what to do here about the human being. With plants and animals it is clear: they were created by God, as the Bible says, "according to their kind," according to the divine design proper to them. One prototype for each genus, species, and subspecies, and the life of an individual creature is not so important.

On the other hand, the whole offspring can then be sanctified at once by sanctifying one sacrificial animal, because animals of one genus, species, and subspecies, especially individuals from one herd, share one life among them. But it is not so with human beings: here each person is unique. People, even those belonging to one clan or tribe, cannot be sanctified like animals. Besides, human beings do not share one life among all; each has his own. What then should be done? The answer is simple: a human being is sanctified in a human way, that is, consciously, as a human being is supposed to be sanctified through sacrifice, by means of a sacrificial meal. But an infant is sanctified by his parents. They are the ones who let God into their life and into the life of their child.

Animals of one species have one soul for all: one is offered in sacrifice, and all are sanctified. Human souls are distinct, but in spouses their souls are joined into one, and the soul of the child enters the circle of their communion. When the parents let God into their shared life, He sanctifies not only their life but also the life of their firstborn, within the single space of relationships that binds the child to the parents and the parents to each other. This is how a human being is sanctified: by letting God into his life.

When getting ready for a trip, even a long-awaited vacation, a person always worries. How will everything turn out? How will I get there? And how can I leave everything here? Leaving Egypt--leaving amid scandal, not peacefully--each one who left experienced not just worry, but fear. What will happen tomorrow? It is bad here, but there is uncertainty there. Where are we all going? Who knows what awaits us? And how will Pharaoh react to our leaving? To abandon everything, little though it may be, miserable though it may be, but still one's own, and go nowhere, where there is nothing yet, trusting only the faith of the fathers and a persistent, tongue-tied man.

What then does the leader of the people say to his fellow tribesmen: what to take on the road, where we are going, how we will go, what awaits us ahead? No. He says that every year, for many hundreds and thousands of years, the same thing will happen: everyone will remember the departure from slavery.