The Mekhilta asks another of its characteristically sharp questions about the Red Sea crossing. The verse says the Egyptians "descended into the metzulot" — the whirlpools or churning depths (Exodus 15:5). But are there really metzulot at the bottom of the sea? The Israelites had just walked across on dry land. The seabed was solid ground. Where did these violent whirlpools come from?
The answer reveals yet another dimension of the miracle. According to the Mekhilta, the Great Sea — the Mediterranean — burst into the Red Sea at the moment of judgment. The two bodies of water, normally separated, merged in a catastrophic collision. The Mediterranean's torrents flooded into the exposed channel of the Red Sea and embattled the Egyptians with a force they could not have anticipated.
This transforms the geography of the miracle. The Egyptians were not simply caught when the walls of the Red Sea collapsed back together. They were attacked by a second sea entirely — the Mediterranean rushing in from the north or west, creating metzulot (whirlpools) where two massive bodies of water collided on what had been, moments earlier, dry ground.
God marshaled the waters of multiple seas against Pharaoh's army. The Red Sea came from the sides. The subterranean depths rose from below. And the Great Sea burst in from beyond. The Mekhilta paints a picture of total aquatic annihilation — the entire hydrological system of the earth conscripted into divine service, converging on one army, in one place, at one devastating moment.