Rabbi Eliezer ben Yehudah of Bortutha declared that God split the Red Sea in the merit of the twelve tribes of Israel. The tribal structure of the nation — not the faith of any single individual, but the collective identity of all twelve families descended from Jacob — earned the miracle.
The proof comes from the prophet Habakkuk: "You have split the sea for his tribes, the heads of his scattered ones" (Habakkuk 3:14). The verse explicitly connects the splitting of the sea to the tribes. It was not split for Moses alone, not for the elders, not for the righteous few. It was split for the tribes — all of them, each one carrying its own identity, its own banner, its own unique role in the national destiny of Israel.
The Mekhilta reinforces this with a verse from Psalms: "Who split the sea into sections" (Psalms 136:13). The word "sections" — "gezarim" — suggests that the sea was not split into a single path. It was divided into multiple sections, one for each tribe. Tradition holds that twelve separate corridors opened through the water, allowing each tribe to cross on its own path, maintaining its distinct identity even in the midst of the miracle.
This teaching carries profound theological weight. The merit that earned the splitting of the sea was not individual righteousness or personal piety. It was the preservation of collective identity — the fact that Jacob's children had maintained their tribal distinctions through centuries of slavery in Egypt. They entered the sea as twelve tribes and emerged on the other side as twelve tribes. The structure held, and God honored it with twelve paths through the water.