Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai made a breathtaking claim: the sun and the moon themselves serve as eternal witnesses that God had already committed to splitting the sea for Israel long before the event occurred.
The proof comes from the prophet Jeremiah: "Thus said the Lord who gives the sun for light by day, the laws of moon and stars for light by night, who splits the sea and stuns its waves — the Lord of hosts is His name" (Jeremiah 31:35).
Rabbi Shimon read this verse with extraordinary precision. Jeremiah lists God's attributes in a single unbroken sequence: He gives the sun, He governs the moon and stars, He splits the sea. All three are presented as permanent, ongoing realities — not one-time historical events. Just as the sun rises every day and the moon follows its laws every night, so too the splitting of the sea is woven into the fabric of creation itself.
The sun and moon are witnesses because their very existence testifies to the same God who split the sea. Every sunrise and every moonrise repeats the testimony: the God who set these lights in motion is the same God who tore the waters apart. The celestial bodies do not merely illuminate the world — they bear witness to God's power over all the elements.
For Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai, the splitting of the Red Sea was not an interruption of nature. It was an expression of the same divine will that keeps the sun burning and the moon orbiting. Nature and miracle are not opposites — they are different manifestations of the same Creator, testified to by the same witnesses, every single day and every single night.