The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael preserves a remarkable teaching by Shimon of Kitron about why God split the Red Sea for Israel. The answer has nothing to do with Moses raising his staff or the Israelites crying out in prayer. It goes back to a single act of moral courage performed by one man generations earlier: Joseph.
Shimon of Kitron taught that God said: "In the merit of the bones of Joseph, I will split the sea for them." The connection between Joseph and the sea is established through a pair of verses linked by a single Hebrew word. In (Genesis 39:12), when Potiphar's wife grabbed Joseph's garment and tried to seduce him, the Torah says "he left his garment in her hand and he fled" — vayanas, he fled. In (Psalms 114:3), describing the splitting of the sea, the text says "the sea saw and it fled" — vayanos, it fled.
The same Hebrew root, nus, meaning "to flee," appears in both verses. Joseph fled from sin. The sea fled from Israel. Shimon of Kitron reads this verbal parallel as a causal connection: because Joseph fled from temptation, the sea would later flee before his descendants.
This teaching carries a powerful moral lesson. The greatest miracle in Israelite history, the splitting of the Red Sea, was earned not by military might or political negotiation but by one man's private decision to resist temptation. Joseph was alone in a room with Potiphar's wife. No one was watching. He could have given in and no human would have known. But he fled, and that act of fleeing rippled forward through the centuries until the waters of the sea fled in response. In rabbinic thought, the merit of the righteous does not expire. It accumulates, and at the right moment, it splits oceans.