A road through the sea

Pharaoh changes his mind one last time, and six hundred chariots come after a crowd of former slaves with their children and their animals. Israel is pinned between the army and the water, and their reaction is the one that will define the next forty years: better to have stayed slaves. Moses says, stand still and see the salvation of the LORD; the LORD will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace. Then the wind blows all night, the sea opens, and they walk through on dry ground. The army follows into the gap and does not come out. On the far shore the nation sings for the first time. It is the memory Israel returns to in every later crisis — not a doctrine about God, but a night they can point at.