Parshat Beshalach5 min read

The Sea Knew What It Would Do Before Pharaoh Had Horses

Moses cries out at the water and God asks why, because Israel's rescue was not a favor to be earned but a covenant already sealed before creation.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Moses Stands Between Army and Water
  2. The Question Is Not Irritation
  3. The Sea Had Already Made Its Covenant
  4. The Enemy Said I Will Pursue and Was Wrong
  5. The Dry Ground Waited From the Beginning

Moses Stands Between Army and Water

The army is close enough to hear. The sea is close enough to smell. The people are pressed between two kinds of death, and Moses is at the front, and Moses cries out.

He cries out in prayer. He cries out because there is nothing else to do when every visible option has been eliminated. He cries out the way a person cries out when they have done everything they were asked to do and still arrived at a place where only God is left.

Then God asks him a question that sounds almost like a rebuke: why do you cry out to Me?

The Question Is Not Irritation

The Mekhilta hears intimacy inside that question, not impatience. What God says to Moses at the shore is not: you are wasting time or you are bothering Me with something obvious. What God says is closer to: these are My children. The work of My hands. Would you give Me instructions about them?

The reversal is complete. Moses came to the shore thinking he was the advocate, the intercessor, the one who would explain Israel's desperate situation to heaven and request divine assistance. God's response locates the obligation in the opposite direction. Moses does not need to remind God about Israel. God made them. God named them. God carries them the way a father carries a child on his shoulders.

A craftsman does not need to be reminded to protect the work of his own hands. The sea was going to open not because Moses prayed with enough urgency but because Israel was already the work of the One who owned the sea.

The Sea Had Already Made Its Covenant

The Mekhilta opens up the timeline. The sea did not decide at the last moment, when the army was pressing close and Israel was trapped. The sea had its instructions from creation. At the moment the world was made, the sea was told what it would do at this crossing. The event Israel was standing in front of was not a new miracle being improvised. It was a condition built into the creation of the sea before Egypt existed as a nation.

What earned the sea's opening? The Mekhilta names several answers. The merits of the fathers. The faith of those who first went into the water. The act of Israel at the sea who did not hesitate. But underneath all of these is a prior fact: the sea was ready. The covenant was already sealed. Israel's arrival at the water was the fulfillment of a promise made in the deep before Pharaoh had a single horse.

The Enemy Said I Will Pursue and Was Wrong

While all of this was already decided on Israel's side, the Egyptian army was organizing its thoughts about the chase. The Song of the Sea records what the enemy said: I will pursue. I will overtake. I will divide the spoil. My desire will be satisfied. I will draw my sword. My hand will subdue them.

Five declarations of a certainty that was not there. An empire counting what it would take from a people who were already walking through water on dry ground. The sea was splitting while Pharaoh's captains were planning. The enemy's confident future-tense statements ran directly into an event that had already been decided in the past.

The Dry Ground Waited From the Beginning

Jeremiah's image captures what the Mekhilta is circling around. Go and call out in the ears of Jerusalem: I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, your following Me in the wilderness. God's memory of Israel runs backward to the beginning, to the moment before the covenant was ratified, to the first step taken in trust before trust had been rewarded with anything visible.

The sea was ready before Egypt had horses because the covenant was sealed before Egypt had power. The cry of Moses at the shore was heard before he made it. The dry ground was waiting before the army was in sight. Israel's rescue at the sea was not a response to a prayer at the last possible moment. It was a response to a relationship that preceded everything that tried to end it.

Red SeaExodusCreationMekhiltaDivine Providence
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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Mekhilta Tractate Vayehi Beshalach 4:24Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael

Rabbi Eliezer HaModai preserved one of the most extraordinary statements God ever made about the people of Israel. When Moses cried out at the Red Sea, God responded: "Why do you cry out to Me?" But the reason was not impatience, it was something far more profound.

God declared: I do not need to be commanded regarding the children of Israel. The verse from (Isaiah 45:11) drives the point home: "For My children and the work of My hands would you command Me?" The question is rhetorical and almost indignant. Israel is God's own handiwork, His personal creation. No one needs to remind a craftsman to care for the masterpiece of his own hands.

Then Rabbi Eliezer makes an even more staggering claim: Israel's salvation was not a response to the crisis at the Red Sea. It had been "readied", prepared, set in place, from the six days of creation itself. Before the sea existed, before Egypt existed, before Pharaoh drew his first breath, God had already arranged for Israel's deliverance. The rescue was built into the architecture of the universe.

The proof text from (Jeremiah 31:36) seals the argument: "Just as these laws of nature will not depart from before Me, says the Lord, so the children of Israel will not cease from being a nation before Me for all time." Israel's existence is as permanent as the laws of physics. The sun will rise, the tides will turn, the seasons will cycle. And Israel will endure. These are not separate promises. They are the same promise, woven into the fabric of creation from the very first day.

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Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai 14:14Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai

"And the LORD said to Moses, Why do you cry out to Me?" (Exodus 14:15). Rabbi [Joshua] says: Israel has nothing to do but to journey on. Rabbi Eliezer says: The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses, "My children are in distress, the sea closing them in and the enemy pursuing, and you stand multiplying prayer before Me? Why do you cry out to Me? Speak to the children of Israel, that they journey on."

Rabbi Abtolos the Elder told a parable. To what is this like? To a king of flesh and blood who grew angry with his son, and a certain guardian was pleading before him. He said to him, "Do you plead before me for any reason but for the sake of my son? I am already reconciled to my son." So too, "Speak to the children of Israel, that they journey on." Rabbi [Judah the Prince] says: He said to him, "Last night they were saying, Was it for lack of graves in Egypt? (Exodus 14:11), and now you multiply prayer before Me? Why do you cry out to Me? Speak to the children of Israel" -- He removed these matters from their hearts.

Rabbi Meir says: He said to him, "If for a single man I made the sea into dry land, as it is written, And God said, Let the waters be gathered, and let the dry land appear (Genesis 1:9), shall I not do so for this holy congregation, of whom it is said, To the holy ones who are in the land (Psalms 16:3)?" Rabbi Ishmael says: He said to him, "By the merit of Jerusalem I split the sea for them, as it is said, Awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion (Isaiah 52:1), and it says, Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD... Was it not You who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the depths of the sea a road for the redeemed to pass over? (Isaiah 51:9-10)."

Rabbi Benaiah says: By the merit of what Abraham did before Me I split the sea for them. Of Abraham it says, And he split the wood for the burnt offering (Genesis 22:3); of the sea it says, And the waters were split (Exodus 14:21). Rabbi Yose the Galilean says: Isaac is already as if bound before Me upon the altar, and Abraham as if he stretched out his hand and took the knife; "And you, lift up your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea and split it" (Exodus 14:16). Rabbi Akiva says: By the merit of Jacob I split the sea for them, as it is said, And your seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and you shall break forth to the west (Genesis 28:14). Rabbi Eliezer ben Judah of Bartota says: By the merit of the tribes I split the sea for them, as it is said of Joseph, And he left his garment and fled outside (Genesis 39:12); and of the sea it says, The sea saw it and fled (Psalms 114:3).

Shimon the Temanite says: By the merit of circumcision I split the sea for them, as it is said, If not for My covenant day and night (Jeremiah 33:25). Which covenant is observed by day and by night? You find none but circumcision. And it says, To Him who cut the Sea of Reeds into pieces [le-gezarim] (Psalms 136:13) -- do not read "into pieces" but "to those who cut" [a play marking circumcision]. Shemaiah says: Worthy is the faith with which Abraham believed in Me that I should split the sea for them, as it is said, And he believed in the LORD, and He counted it to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6). Avtalion says: Worthy is the faith with which Israel believed in Me in Egypt that I should split the sea for them, as it is said, And the people believed (Exodus 4:31).

Others say: Worthy is the faith with which Israel believed in Me in Egypt that I should split the sea for them, for they did not say to Moses, "To where are we going out, into this trackless wilderness that has nothing in it, with no provision in our hands for the way?" Thus says the LORD: I remember for you the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed Me in the wilderness, in a land not sown (Jeremiah 2:2). What reward did they receive for this? "Israel is holy to the LORD, the first of His harvest" (Jeremiah 2:3).

Rabbi Elazar of Modiin says: The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses, "Concerning My children do you command Me? Concerning My children and the work of My hands do I need a command? They are already prepared before Me from the six days of creation, as it is said, Thus says the LORD: If the heavens above can be measured... I also will reject all the seed of Israel (Jeremiah 31:36)." Rabbi Aha says: The Holy One said to Moses, "Were it not for your cry I would already have destroyed them from the world, as it is said, He said He would destroy them, had not Moses His chosen one (Psalms 106:23)." Rabbi Shimon ben Judah of Kfar Akko says: Their cry already preceded your cry, as it is said, They were greatly afraid, and the children of Israel cried out to the LORD (Exodus 14:10). Rabbi Nathan says in the name of Rabbi Yose: The Holy One said to Moses, "I have already written of you in the Torah, In all My house he is faithful (Numbers 12:7). You are in My charge and the sea is in My charge; I have already made you treasurer over it." [Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa says: The Holy One said, I have already written, A brother is born for adversity (Proverbs 17:17); I am a brother to Israel in the hour of their trouble, and there are no brothers but Israel, as it is said, For the sake of my brothers and companions (Psalms 122:8).]

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Mekhilta Tractate Shirah 7:1Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael

(Exodus 15:9) "The foe said: I shall pursue, etc.": This appertains (chronologically) to the beginning of the parshah. Why is it written here? For "there is no before and after in the Torah." Similarly, (Isaiah 6:1) "In the year of the death of King Uzziahu, etc." This appertains to the beginning of the parshah. Why is it written here? For "there is no before and after in the Torah." Similarly, (Ezekiel 2:1) "Son of man, stand on your feet" (Some say [Ibid. 17:1] "Son of man, propose a riddle.") This appertains to the beginning of the parshah. Why is it written here? For "there is no before and after in the Torah." Similarly, (Jeremiah 2:2) "Go and call out in the ears of Jerusalem." This belongs in the beginning of the parshah. Why is it written here? For "there is no before and after in the Torah." Similarly, (Hoshea 10:1) "Israel is (like) a vine that has shed, etc." This appertains to the beginning of the parshah. Why is it written here? For "there is no before and after in the Torah." Similarly, (Koheleth 1:12) "I, Koheleth, was king over Israel in Jerusalem." This appertains to the beginning of the parshah. Why is it written here? For "there is no before and after in the Torah."

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