Sound The Trumpet : Israel and the Sea of Reeds

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“Israel and the Sea of Reeds”
by wayoflife.org
October 14th, 2014

"And thou didst divide the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea on the dry land; and their persecutors thou threwest into the deeps, as a stone into the mighty waters" (Nehemiah 9:11). Theological liberals and many of their "evangelical" friends say that Israel crossed north of the Red Sea in the Bitter Lakes region. Consider the following statement from Halley's Bible Handbook, which is reputed to be conservative: "The sea then would have flowed north into the depressions known today as the Bitter Lakes. If a steady wind pushed the shallow water north into the Bitter Lakes, it would have lowered the level of the water so that a land bridge would appear, which is not an uncommon phenomenon." In reply to this we offer the following: (1) The Hebrew word "suph," which is translated "Red" in most Bibles, does mean "reed," but this does not mean that the Bible is talking about a shallow reed lake. The Red Sea was called "Reed Sea" in ancient times, not because it was shallow, but because reeds grow in marshy areas in places along its shores. (The Hebrew word refers to water reeds in general and not to papyrus only.) Further, in the New Testament it is called the Red Sea and not the Reed Sea (Acts 7:36; Heb. 11:29). In ancient times the name Red Sea was given to the entire Arabian Sea, including the modern Red Sea and its arms and the Persian Gulf (Kenneth Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament). In 1 Kings 9:26, the Gulf of Aqaba where Ezion Geber was located is called the Red Sea. (2) The bottom line is that the Bible says they crossed a sea, and the description of the crossing is not the description of a marsh or a lake. In ancient times the Bitter Lakes were not deep; they were more like marshy salt flats.* But the water that Israel crossed is described as deep and mighty. It formed a wall unto the Israelites on the right and left as they crossed it (Ex. 14:22; 15:4-5, 10; Neh. 9:11; Psa 106:9; Isa. 51:10). Paul describes the crossing as a baptism in the cloud and in the sea (1 Cor. 10:1-2). Baptism means immersion, so Paul was saying that Israel walked between walls of water beneath the cloud of glory. We know, then, that the crossing was over an arm of the sea itself and not a lake or marsh. (* "Prior to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, Great Bitter Lake was a large salt flat; in the arid climate, basins rarely accumulate enough water to become true lakes," NASA Earth Observatory).

Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13