Rabbi Nechemiah painted a vivid picture of the chaos that engulfed the Egyptian army at the Red Sea. When God unleashed thunder from the heavens, the physical world below shattered in response. The pivots of the Egyptian chariots flew off, the yokes broke loose, and the chariots began careening wildly on their own, dragging their terrified occupants into the sea.
The proof-text comes from (Psalms 77:19): "The rumble of Your thunder caught the wheel; lightnings lit the world." Rabbi Nechemiah read this psalm not as poetic metaphor but as a precise description of what happened at the sea. The thunder was so powerful that it physically seized the wheels of the chariots. The word "caught" implies a violent, sudden force, as though invisible hands grabbed the spinning wheels and wrenched them from their axles.
The lightnings that "lit the world" add another dimension. The Egyptians were plunged into simultaneous sensory overload: blinding flashes of light, deafening crashes of thunder, and the terrifying sensation of their war machines disintegrating beneath them. Their chariots, the most advanced military technology of the ancient world, became instruments of their own destruction.
Rabbi Nechemiah's interpretation emphasizes that the defeat of Egypt was not merely a matter of water closing over soldiers. It was a systematic dismantling of Egyptian power. The chariots, symbols of Pharaoh's might, were reduced to runaway wreckage. The horses panicked. The soldiers lost all control. Before a single wave crashed down, the Egyptian army had already been defeated by the sheer force of God's voice echoing through the heavens and tearing the world apart below.