When the Israelites saw the Egyptian army bearing down on them and the Red Sea blocking their escape, the Torah says they "were exceedingly afraid." But what did they do with that fear? The Mekhilta says they "embraced the trade of their fathers" — and that trade was prayer.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had each established prayer as the defining practice of the Jewish people. The Mekhilta traces this inheritance through specific verses, beginning with Abraham. At Beth-el, the Torah records that Abraham "built there an altar to the Lord, and he called in the name of the Lord" (Genesis 12:8). That act of calling out — of establishing a place of worship and crying to God — was Abraham's foundational contribution to his descendants' spiritual vocabulary.
When the Israelites stood terrified at the water's edge, they did not reach for swords. They did not attempt to negotiate. They did not scatter in panic. Instead, they did what their ancestors had taught them to do: they prayed. The fear was real and overwhelming, but the response was inherited — passed down through generations like a family profession.
The Mekhilta's choice of the word "trade" is deliberate. Prayer is not described as an instinct or an emotion. It is a craft — something learned, practiced, refined over generations. Abraham was the first practitioner. His descendants at the Red Sea were journeymen in the same profession, deploying the same tool their forefather had first wielded at an altar in Beth-el. Terror drove them not to despair but to the family business.