Before the tenth plague struck, God executed judgment on every idol in Egypt. Stone gods shattered into fragments. Wooden gods rotted to dust. Idols of silver, brass, iron, and lead melted into puddles on the ground. And when the Egyptians finally drowned in the Red Sea, fire descended from heaven and consumed whatever remained of their gods.
According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, Moses went personally among the Egyptian firstborn before the final plague and delivered the warning himself. "About midnight," he told them, "the Lord will go forth in the midst of Egypt, and all the firstborn shall die." The firstborn panicked. They ran to their fathers and said, "Every plague Moses predicted has come true. Now he says we will die." Their fathers sent them to Pharaoh. But Pharaoh, himself a firstborn, refused to relent. He ordered his servants to beat anyone who begged him to release the Israelites.
The firstborn of Egypt took matters into their own hands. They turned on their own people and killed 600,000 Egyptians who supported Pharaoh's stubbornness. Even before God's angel arrived at midnight, Egypt was tearing itself apart from the inside.
When the Israelites finally left, Pharaoh pursued them with his chariots. At the Red Sea, God did not merely part the waters. He made the sea floor dry and comfortable for Israel while turning it into a deathtrap for Egypt. The waters crashed down on the Egyptian army like walls collapsing. Every chariot, every horse, every soldier vanished. The sea spit their bodies onto the shore so the Israelites could see with their own eyes that their oppressors were truly dead. Miriam took up her timbrel, and the women danced, because the empire that had enslaved them for generations was finished in a single night.