Parting of the Red Sea and Possible Explanations For It | Middle East And North Africa

JEWS FLEE EGYPT, PURSUED BY THE EGYPTIANS

After the 10th plague and the observation of the first Passover, Moses and the Israelites embarked on their Exodus from the Land of Goshen in the Nile Delta in Egypt to the Promised Land. The route between Goshen in the Nile Delta in Egypt and the Promised Land in Canaan (Israel) crossed the Sinai Peninsula.

Exodus 14:5 And it was told the king of Egypt that the people fled: and the heart of Pharaoh and of his servants was turned against the people, and they said, Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us? 14:6 And he made ready his chariot, and took his people with him: 14:7 And he took six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them. 14:8 And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued after the children of Israel: and the children of Israel went out with an high hand. [Source: King James Version of the Bible, gutenberg.org]

Possible Exodus route

14:9 But the Egyptians pursued after them, all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh, and his horsemen, and his army, and overtook them encamping by the sea, beside Pihahiroth, before Baalzephon. 14:10 And when Pharaoh drew nigh, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and, behold, the Egyptians marched after them; and they were sore afraid: and the children of Israel cried out unto the LORD.

Moses and the Parting of the Red Sea

After the Israelites left Egypt the Pharaoh changed his mind about letting the Israelites go and sent an army in pursuit of them and cornered them at the Red Sea. To allow the Israelites to escape Moses parted the Red Sea. According to the Torah, "And the Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on the right and on their left." When the Egyptian chariots pursued them the waters of the Red Sea collapsed and drowned them.

To explain the parting of the Red Sea some scientists suggest that Moses passed through the swampy region near where the Suez Canal is today. They speculate that if Moses arrived at a time when a strong low tide coincided with strong winds the Red Sea might "part" enough to be crossed on foot. When the Egyptians crossed the tides ebbed and winds died, swamping the pursuers.

Adding further credence to this theory is the fact that the Hebrew phrase, “Yam Suph”, traditionally translated to "Red Sea," should actually be read as "Reed Sea." The Bitter Lakes, Lake Sirbonis (a Mediterranean lagoon now called Sabkhet el Bardowil) and Lake Manzala, where the water is shallow enough to be crossed on foot, both have lots of reeds.☼

The victory song sung after a defeat of the Egyptian cavalry resembled Canaanite poems from the 14th century B.C.

Exodus on the Parting of the Red Sea

Exodus 14:21 reads: “Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.” And then, according to the Bible, the Israelites were free from Pharaoh’s rule. In Cecil B. DeMille's 1955 film “The Ten Commandments”, a bearded and robes Charlton Heston stood in front the Red Sea and commanded the waters to part. After the Pharaoh’s chariots entered the dry sea bed in pursuit of the Israelites, the parted walls of collpased on top of them.

Exodus 14:19: And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them: 14:20 And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night. [Source: King James Version of the Bible, gutenberg.org]

14:21 And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. 14:22 And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left. 14:23 And the Egyptians pursued, and went in after them to the midst of the sea, even all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen.

Moses parts the Red Sea so the Isrealites can flee Egypt

14:24 And it came to pass, that in the morning watch the LORD looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians, 14:25 And took off their chariot wheels, that they drave them heavily: so that the Egyptians said, Let us flee from the face of Israel; for the LORD fighteth for them against the Egyptians.

14:26 And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand over the sea, that the waters may come again upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen. 14:27 And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to his strength when the morning appeared; and the Egyptians fled against it; and the LORD overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. 14:28 And the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them; there remained not so much as one of them. 14:29 But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea; and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.

14:30 Thus the LORD saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea shore. 14:31 And Israel saw that great work which the LORD did upon the Egyptians: and the people feared the LORD, and believed the LORD, and his servant Moses. 15:1 Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the LORD, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea:
15:2 The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father's God, and I will exalt him. ▪ 15:3 The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name.
15:4 Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea: his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red sea.
15:5 The depths have covered them: they sank into the bottom as a stone.
15:6 Thy right hand, O LORD, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O LORD, hath dashed in pieces the enemy.
15:7 And in the greatness of thine excellency thou hast overthrown them that rose up against thee: thou sentest forth thy wrath, which consumed them as stubble.
15:8 And with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together, the floods stood upright as an heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea.
15:9 The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.
15:10 Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters.
15:11 Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? 15:12 Thou stretchedst out thy right hand, the earth swallowed them...

Egyptians swallowed up as the parting of Red Sea ends

Parting of the “Reed Sea

If you read the bible in the original Hebrew, the word 'red' is mistranslated. In the Hebrew bible Moses and his people cross the 'yam suph' - the Sea of Reeds. The Egyptologist David Rohl told the BBC: “Now this is a strange story. You can imagine trying to cross the Red Sea would be horrendously difficult but a Reed Sea is something quite different. This is marshland areas and this is probably what they crossed. Ancient Egyptian texts mention an area called Patchoufy: The Reeds. This is probably what they crossed.”|::|

How then do you account for the sea coming back and vanquishing the soldiers? Exodus 14:27 reads: “So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the Egyptians fled into it, the LORD threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea.” Rohl rold the BBC: “If you're talking about a shallow reed swamp of maybe two or three meters maximum of water, this sort of thing is physically possible. In fact it's been witnessed within the last 100 years... The Egyptian army might not have been completely decimated. Many of the horses would have been killed, chariots would have been stuck in the mud.” |::|

Parting of the Red Sea Caused by a Tsunami?

Carole Barthelemy from Wisconsin wrote me in an e-mail: I came upon a photo of the area surrounding the Red Sea. There, in the area that is described elsewhere as the probable location of the Red Sea crossing, I saw a sand bar running across the proposed path, from land west to land east. I could have been underwater. It showed up very clearly. The Bible describes a strong wind and something like an earthquake that day. A tsunami? The kind of tsunami that parts the waters? An earthquake that raised the surface below the water to form a sandbar? The Bible says the crossing was at night. I, for one, wouldn't have considered the crossing unless I could have seen what I was stepping onto and not into. Maybe there was a sandbar. Maybe it was a little higher than the water level. Maybe it was too wet and freshly laid for the chariot wheels to make it across without sinking into the sand. And maybe the water was still being greatly stirred up in all the wind.

Professor Costas Synolakis, a leading tsunami expert, believes the massive volcanic eruption on the Greek island of Santorini in 1600 B.C. could have generated a tsunami that struck the Nile Delta with such power it could have parted the 'reed sea' in the delta. Costas Synolak told the BBC: “In 1994, the Philippine island of Mindoro was hit by a tsunami and an earthquake. The earthquake caused a massive crack in the bed of a lake about a mile inland. An eye-witness said he saw the water like a waterfall in the centre of the lake just go down. After a while, he could see the bottom of the lake: "I thought I could even walk through. Then the tsunami arrived one mile further down the river and swept away a 6,000 ton barge lying on the shore. The mega-tsunami which hit the Nile delta was a thousand times more devastating than this one.|::|

Egyptian army destroyed

Computer simulations of the Santorini eruption show that the collapse of the island would have triggered a mega-tsunami, 200 meters high and traveling 350 kilometers per hour. Floyd McCoy, a tsunami expert, told the BBC this was one of the largest waves in history and must have reached Egypt: “We find evidence, believe it or not, on the deep ocean floor. The tsunamis actually scraped across the bottom of the ocean floor in the Mediterranean and disturbed the sediment. We can find that sediment. That gives us some indication of the directions they went ... The computer model showed us waves radiating out all over the Mediterranean, reaching the Nile Delta.|::|

Could such a tsunami have parted the Reed Sea? Large tsunamis suck in billions of gallons of water — not just from the shore but from connecting rivers and lakes — before the main waves strike, creating dry land for as long as two hours before being inundated by the tsunami waves. Such conditions could produce a sudden disappearance of water and a giant wave that could destroy an army.|::|

Parting of the Red Sea Caused by Strong Winds?

In 2010, Carl Drews, a software engineer with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, produced a computer model that illustrated how a body of water could be parted by wind — something meteorologists call wind set-down — using the lines from Exodus 14:21which describes a strong east wind blowing overnight as his guide. [Source: NPR.org Heard on All Things Considered, September 26, 2010]

NPR reported: “After modeling a body of water that resembled the waters trapping Moses and the Israelites, Drews enforced the laws of physics and applied a wind stress to the water body. "What I did was use a wind, sort of the strongest wind that I thought ... a mixed group of adults and children could walk straight into," Drews says. This amounts to about a 63 mph wind — a medium-strength tropical storm, as measured by the scale the National Hurricane Center uses.

“But this is different from other tropical storms that occur frequently around the world. "The wind blows on the water, and it stacks it up at the other end. The opposite component of wind set-down is called storm surge," Drews says. He proposes that there was a bend in the body of water pointing east, and as the water shifted, it separated at the point of the bend, leaving a gap there.

“Through his research, Drews says, he is fairly certain where Moses was at the time the waters parted; it was not at the heart of the Red Sea. “The place I picked is not at the Red Sea proper, it’s at the north end of the Suez Canal in one of the shallow lagoons along the Mediterranean Sea.” As Drews points out, the term Yam Suf, a biblical term used in Exodus, means a marshy area filled with reeds. This is the same area where a British general named Alexander Tulloch witnessed a similar wind set-down event in 1882. “He observed a strong east wind blow all night long, and in the morning the water had completely disappeared,” says Drews. “The lake was blown seven kilometers to the west.”

“Drews says Tulloch’s observation is modern-day evidence of what happened when Moses reached the Red Sea, and supports his latest research. While many researchers use science to disprove literal accounts in the Bible, Drews looks at scientific evidence that supports biblical events. “I think my account matches the biblical account pretty closely,” he says. Although, Drews admits, he cannot be 100 percent sure until someone actually finds pieces of a chariot in the area.”

Text Sources: Internet Jewish History Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “ Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions” edited by R.C. Zaehner (Barnes & Noble Books, 1959); “Old Testament Life and Literature” by Gerald A. Larue, New International Version (NIV) of The Bible, biblegateway.com; Wikipedia, National Geographic, BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Times of London, The New Yorker, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, and various books and other publications.

Last updated March 2024