Walking Barefoot Between Two Walls of Water and the Dawn of Freedom

And when Moses had stretched forth his hand over the sea, the Lord took it away by a strong and burning wind blowing all the night, and turned it into dry ground: and the water was divided. Down through the heart of the bay of Pi-hahiroth, a wide avenue of compacted sand and limestone reef stretched from shore to shore. On the right hand and on the left of that newborn highway, millions of tons of salt water did not spill back: they stood upright like two towering fortress walls of dark sapphire, mirroring the crimson-gold blaze of the pillar of fire.

Yet seeing the open road was one thing; daring to plant the first bare foot down onto the floor of the abyss between two roaring walls of water dozens of feet high demanded a radical act of faith. Fathers gripped the hands of their small children; elders leaning on staffs hesitated at the tideline. Should those trembling walls of water collapse for a single second, not a soul would survive. Moses stepped down first, gripping the acacia staff of Midian. His bare feet touched the seabed: it was not ankle-deep mire, but firm, dry ground baked hard beneath the burning breath of God’s wind.

The First Barefoot Step onto the Seabed Between Two Walls of Water

The children of Israel went in through the midst of the sea dried up. Thousands, then hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children filed down into the cleft abyss. Cool, salt-laden mist rising from the two walls of water on their right hand and on their left brushed the cheeks of the former brick-slaves. Wide-eyed children gazed up at the translucent ramparts glowing with heavenly fire. Entire flocks of sheep and herds of cattle marched across the floor of the deep without a single hoof sinking into mud.

When the host of Israel had crossed more than halfway through the sea, the curtain of cloud in the rear lifted. Suddenly the Egyptians saw the dry highway carved through the deep. Instead of trembling before the sovereign might of the God of Israel, blind rage and imperial pride drove Pharaoh and his generals forward. They lashed their horses and plunged straight in after them. All Pharaoh’s horses, his six hundred chosen chariots, and the whole of his cavalry thundered down between the two walls of water, bronze wheels clattering across the floor of the abyss.

And now the morning watch was come—the final dark hours between two in the morning and daybreak—and behold, the Lord looking upon the Egyptian army through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, slew their host. A single glance from heaven shattered the mightiest war machine on earth. Thunder and lightning split the sky above the pursuers, and the ground beneath the Egyptian chariots turned suddenly into a choking mire.

The Morning Watch: When the Glance of the Lord Overthrew the Chariot Wheels

Catastrophe struck Pharaoh’s armored corps. Bronze wheels that had flown like the wind across the desert bound fast in the deep mud, axles snapped with sharp cracks, and the Lord overthrew the wheels of the chariots so that they were carried into the deep. Panicked warhorses reared and tangled in their harnesses, trampling archers and drivers alike. The Egyptians could neither press forward nor wheel around to flee.

Seized with terror at the bottom of the dark sea, Pharaoh’s own elite veterans screamed to one another the confession of their defeat: “Let us flee from Israel: for the Lord fighteth for them against us!” The hunter realized at last that he had marched of his own accord into the trap of the Almighty. Yet it was too late.

At that very moment, the last family of Israel and the last lamb of the flock stepped up onto the eastern shoreline, planting their feet on the dry gravel of the Sinai peninsula. And the Lord said to Moses: “Stretch forth thy hand over the sea, that the waters may come again upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and horsemen.”

When the Staff Is Raised a Second Time and the Deep Closes at Daybreak

Standing upon the seaside crag on the far shore, Moses lifted his shepherd’s staff once more and stretched forth his hand over the sea. At the exact moment when the first pale light of dawn touched the eastern ridge, the east wind ceased. The two colossal walls of water on the right hand and on the left shuddered and crashed together with the thunder of a closing world.

The Egyptians whipped their horses to flee against the rushing tide, yet the Lord enveloped them in the midst of the waves. The waters returned to their ancient depth and covered the chariots and the horsemen of all the army of Pharaoh, who had entered into the sea after Israel. Neither did there so much as one of them remain.

From the Crossing of the Red Sea to the Grace of Holy Baptism

When the morning sun rose gold over the calm surface of the Red Sea, six hundred thousand Israelites stood along the shore of freedom in hushed awe. The taskmasters who had lashed their backs for four centuries would never be seen again. As the Catholic Church proclaims at every Easter Vigil, that passage beneath the cloud and through the divided sea was the first Baptism in salvation history: there the old bondage of sin and Satan was buried beneath the waters, so that a new people might step ashore in the resurrection dawn of the children of God.