The Mekhilta notices something unusual about the verse "And Moses made Israel journey from the Red Sea" (Exodus 15:22). Rabbi Yehoshua points out that this particular journey was initiated by Moses himself — not by God. Every other journey in the wilderness followed a different pattern. The Torah states explicitly (Numbers 9:18): "By word of the Lord they journeyed and by word of the Lord they encamped." The cloud moved, and they followed. God led, and Israel obeyed.
But not this time. This one journey — the departure from the Red Sea — was by word of Moses alone. The verse is unambiguous: "And Moses made Israel journey." Not God. Moses. The distinction raises an immediate question: why did Moses need to force the issue?
The implication, developed elsewhere in rabbinic literature, is that Israel did not want to leave the Red Sea. The Egyptians had been defeated. The sea had displayed treasures washed up from the drowned army. The people were content to linger, to collect spoils, to rest in the afterglow of the greatest miracle they had ever witnessed. They had to be moved along.
Moses understood what they did not: the journey was not over. The sea was a waypoint, not a destination. And so he exercised his own authority — the one time in the wilderness narrative where a human command, not a divine one, got Israel moving.