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It was a narrow escape. Moses and Pharaoh had been locked in a test of wills, but plague after plague wore the Egyptian king down. He finally relented and set the Israelites free. Not long after issuing his decree, however, Pharaoh changed his mind and sent his army to recapture the Israelites. When the Egyptians caught up with them, the Israelites were camped by the Sea of Reeds. With an army on one side and treacherous waters on the other, the people were trapped.
Surely such a situation would be enough to terrify anyone. The Israelites were face-to-face with death, and there seemed to be nothing they could do about it. Overcome by panic, they turned on Moses. “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” they demanded.
Moses tried to rally the people. “Stand firm,” he told them. “The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still” (Exodus 14:11,13,14). All they had to do, according to Moses, was wait and see how God would deliver them.
It was a perfectly respectable answer, filled with faith and trust in the God who had already done so much for them. But it was also the wrong answer at the wrong time. Hearing Moses’ words, God intervened and rebuked the…
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