Nachshon Walked Into the Sea While the Tribes Argued

The water lay flat and dark in front of them, and behind them the ground had begun to shake. Nachshon son of Aminadav stood among the tribe of Judah and listened to the sound he had been dreading since the wilderness narrowed to this one strip of sand. Not the sea. The chariots. Hundreds of them, the wheels rolling closer, the horses screaming, the dust of Egypt rising into a wall behind the people who had walked out of Egypt only days before.

In front of them, no road. Only the sea, heavy and indifferent, refusing to move.

Every Tribe Waited for Another to Go First

The arguing started before anyone could think. One man turned to the men beside him and said it plainly. I will not go down into that water first. And the man beside him said the same. And the tribe behind them said the same. Every family, every clan, every banner. Each looked across at the others and waited, and the waiting became its own kind of speech, a long and clever excuse passed from mouth to mouth so that no one had to be the one to step off the dry land and into the depth.

They were good at this. They could deliberate while the world ended. Each tribe hid behind its neighbor, and the hiding spread, and the louder the chariots grew the more reasons there were to keep standing still. The men of Judah debated. The men of Reuben debated. The sea did not part for debate.

Moses Lifted His Hands and Poured Out His Heart

Moses stood apart from them with his arms raised. He had brought them this far on the strength of his voice, and now his voice climbed up out of his chest in long ropes of prayer, pleading, circling back, beginning again. He prayed the way a man prays when he has run out of every other thing to do, when the enemy is close enough that he can hear the harness leather creak, when the only road left is the one straight up to heaven.

He waxed long. He drew the prayer out and out, syllable after syllable, while the people stood frozen behind him and the dust wall came on. He did not stop. He could not think what else his hands were for.

God Cut the Prayer Off Mid-Breath

And the answer came, and it was not the answer Moses wanted. My loved ones are drowning in the sea, came the voice, and the sea is raging, and the foe is pursuing, and you stand here and wax long in prayer?

Moses froze with his hands still in the air. Lord of the universe, he said, what can I do? It was an honest question from a man who had emptied himself. There was the water. There was the army. There was nothing in his hands but the staff and nothing in his mouth but the prayer that had just been refused. The time for words had closed. Something had to move, and prayer was not moving it.

Nachshon Stepped Off the Sand

Nachshon heard the arguing behind him and the chariots behind that, and he did the thing no tribe would do. He walked forward. Not to the edge. Past it. His feet left the sand and found the soft slime of the bottom, and the cold climbed his shins, his thighs, his chest. The men of Judah shouted at him. Some of them threw stones to drive him back. He kept walking.

The water reached his shoulders. It reached his throat. It poured into the corners of his mouth and he tasted the salt and the silt of it, and still the sea did not part, and still he did not stop. He had stopped waiting to be saved before he was saved. He went down into the deep with the prayer of a drowning man rising in him, save me, for the waters have reached my soul, I am sinking in the slimy depths and find no foothold, let the deep not swallow me and let the mouth of the pit not close over me (Psalms 69:2-3, 16).

The flood was sweeping over his face when the ground beneath his feet held.

The Sea Opened for the Man Already in It

God told Moses to stop praying and lift the staff. Speak to the people that they go forward, came the word, and stretch out your hand over the sea and split it (Exodus 14:15-16). The prayer had bought nothing. The argument had bought nothing. The one body already neck-deep in the water had bought everything, because heaven does not split a sea for people standing safe on the shore weighing their options. It splits it for the man who has already chosen to drown rather than be caught.

Moses raised his hand. The water that had reached Nachshon's mouth shuddered and stood up on either side of him in two green walls, and the slime under his feet turned to dry packed ground, and the road that had not existed ran straight across the seabed to the far shore. The tribes who had argued now ran. The man who had not argued was already halfway across.