The Mekhilta reveals a pattern in God's use of wind as an instrument of judgment — a pattern that connects the destruction of Egypt at the Red Sea to two earlier catastrophes in human history.
The generation of the flood and the people of Sodom were both punished with a strong east wind. The proof comes from a single verse in Job that the Mekhilta splits into two halves, assigning each half to a different generation: "By the breath of God they go lost, and by the wind of His wrath they perish" (Job 4:9).
"By the breath of God they go lost" — this refers to the generation of the flood. The people of Noah's era were not merely drowned by rising waters. God's breath — His divine wind — drove them to destruction. The floodwaters were the visible instrument, but the wind was the force behind them, scattering the wicked across the face of the earth before the waters swallowed them entirely.
"And by the wind of His wrath they perish" — this refers to the generation of Sodom. The fire and brimstone that rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah were carried on a wind of divine wrath. The destruction was not random or chaotic. It was directed, driven, propelled by the same east wind that God would later use to part the Red Sea.
The pattern is deliberate. The same wind that destroyed the wicked in the days of Noah and in the days of Abraham would become the instrument of Israel's salvation at the sea. God's east wind serves dual purposes: it annihilates the corrupt and liberates the righteous. The weapon never changes — only the target does.