The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 14:27 adds a disturbing line to the drowning. Moses stretches his hand, the sea returns at morning, the Mizraee flee from the oncoming waves—and then: "The Lord strengthened the SAFE2 in the midst of the sea, that they should not (soon) die in the midst of it, that they might receive the punishment which had been sent to them."
God kept them alive in the water. Not for mercy. For punishment.
The detail is difficult, and the Targum is not hiding from it. The Egyptians had enslaved Israel for four hundred years. They had drowned Hebrew babies in the Nile (Exodus 1:22). Now, at the Sea, they are granted a strange stamina: they can breathe longer than drowning usually allows, because the punishment is meant to be felt.
The Targum is working out a principle of measure-for-measure justice. Those who drowned infants must experience drowning—not only as death but as duration. The suffering is calibrated to match the suffering they caused.
And yet the text does not linger lovingly over the horror. The sea "returned at the time of the morning unto its strength"—it was going to fall anyway. God's addition is only that it falls thoroughly. The punishment is sent; the sea delivers it; the morning continues.
The Targum leaves us with a theology that is neither triumphant nor vindictive but exact. God does not forget what was done. Neither does the sea.
Takeaway: the Targum teaches that divine justice is precisely measured, and sometimes the most frightening mercy of God is His attention to detail.