The Lord Is Our Guide
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Scripture Reading
Pharaoh and his army are in hot pursuit; the people are anxiously waiting on events; Moses stands at the ready; God has decided what to do. The stage is set for the divine victory over the forces of chaos. After a brief look at some introductory matters, we will explore the themes of the sea crossing.
The combination of various sources provides a kaleidoscope of images: divine messengers, pillars of fire and cloud, alternating light and darkness, a strong east wind, the sea cleft in two, walls of water standing up and lying down, a dry sea canyon pathway, bogged-down Egyptian chariots, a lonely human hand twice stretched out, and a shore strewn with dead bodies. It is enough to make a movie mogul’s mouth water.
The liturgical use of this material may be evident in Joshua 3–4, where the Red Sea/Jordan crossings are linked by a number of common themes (see 3:16–17; 4:22–24). The Jordan River may have been used as a site for a ritualized dramatic rendering of the Red Sea crossing. The historical basis for the detail of the account cannot be determined. Tidal movements in the delta region might be a factor. One could then speak of an unusual confluence of natural and historical possibilities of which God takes advantage. At the least, it has a basis in an escape of an Israelite group from Egyptian control, an event remembered as so exceptional that only an intensified form of the presence of God could adequately explain it. Once again liturgical interests and powerful storytelling skills combine to convey an impressionistic picture. Trying to sort it out in a literal fashion, or suggesting that Israel considered the detail to correspond precisely to reality, is like retouching Renoir’s paintings to make them look like photographs.
Refuge” used as a metaphor for God’s care and protection is a pervasive theme in the Psalter. It is frequently employed in prayers and confessions of confidence in God as a noun (e.g., 14:6; 46:1; 61:3) and as a verb (“take refuge,” e.g., 2:11; 5:11; 11:1). In general secular use, the verb means to seek protected space (Judg. 9:15). In its liturgical context, it means to look to the LORD for security from threatening dangers. Verb and noun belong to the psalmic vocabulary of trust in God (note the parallel in v. 2). They are primarily items in a word field used to speak of the LORD as protector of those who hold to him: fortress, stronghold, dwelling place, shelter. The idiom “shadow/shade of the wings of the LORD” belongs to the vocabulary (see v. 4; 17:8; 36:7; 57:1; 63:7). The life of the faithful in Israel was set in an environment of threatening dangers. This vocabulary and its frequency in the Psalms brings out the important role of trust in coping with the anxieties that beset their life.
The effect is an act of creation. Dry land appears in the midst of chaos, just as in Gen. 1:9–10 (cf. 8:13) at the separation of waters. The divine creative act in the sphere of nature serves as the vehicle for the creation of a liberated people (note also the birthing language—path through water). Creative activity in nature enables creative activity in history. What happens in nature creates new possibilities for God within the historical sphere. The work of God as creator effects the redemption of a people. The activities of God as creator and redeemer are here integrated. The result is not simply historical redemption but a new creation. It should not be forgotten that Moses is thus to be regarded as God’s instrument in creation as well as in redemption. This is continuous with the “let us make” of Gen. 1:26, where creation is shown to be a dialogical act. The extension of dominion to the human in creation is here exemplified in a specific creative act.
This creative act prompts a twofold human response. On the one hand, under cover of darkness, the people of Israel walk through the sea on dry land. The people of Israel are thus not passive; it is an act of faith to walk through such a sea canyon. But faith is not thereby made into a work; it is the appropriation of a gift created quite apart from their own doing. On the other hand, the Egyptians follow Israel’s lead into the newly created possibilities, with chariots and all. God’s creative activity, however, makes for possibilities of judgment as well as redemption. The character of the human response shapes the nature of the participation in those new realities. The anticreation purposes of the Egyptians, set on the subversion of the just order of God’s world and the termination of life and blessing, place them in diametric opposition to what God has newly brought into being. But, even more, God has entered into the willfulness of their intent, driving their obduracy inexorably to their final ruin (see above). In relatively straightforward moral order talk, the Egyptians’ anticreation activity turns the creation against them and they suffer at its hands. God is the broker of that moral order.
As the morning breaks for Israel, the night falls on the Egyptians. God cuts off the Egyptians’ participation in the new creation. The dry land is turned into a quagmire. The brightest and best of the Egyptian military become bogged down in the effects of their own anticreationism. Terror-stricken, they suddenly realize that they are in over their heads, that a power is at work among the Israelites on behalf of the creation that can turn back their efforts. They voice a public confession regarding Israel’s God: Yahweh fights for them. The Egyptians now know that Yahweh is God of all the earth (see 14:4, 18). Ironically, they provide imagery for Israel to voice its own hymnic praises (see at 15:3). This language is fundamentally liturgical and creational, portraying a struggle against the forces of chaos. It has its roots in the mythic divine battle against all that is anticreation.
All who know the prayers and thanksgiving songs and stories of salvation will say Psalm 23 hearing the resonances and allusions to these other areas. This protects the psalm from too individualistic and subjective a reading. The psalm’s confession is based on the salvation history of the people and expresses the individual’s participation in God’s ongoing salvific activity. The trust expressed is not just a matter of mood. Strength must be found, a way must be walked, harm and evil threatened. Enemies persist. That is the environment of trust. Trust is not a rosy, romantic, optimistic view of things. Its foundations are prayer and thanksgiving and the story of salvation.
As in opening up the sea, so in dosing it down, God works in and through human and natural agencies. They are God’s agents in creational judgment as much as in creational redemption. Moses stretches forth his hand/staff over the sea once again, the Jerichoan walls of water fall down, and the dry land disappears. The Egyptians take flight right into the returning waves. They drown in the midst of a chaos of their own making. Not one remained alive. As morning breaks, the sea is calm and the shore is covered with the Egyptian dead. Chaos, in all of its creational-historical manifestations, has been overcome. But Israel walked through the sea on dry land and was safely standing on the opposite shore. God is the victor. Israel is free. The created order is once again established.
When the people see the great work that God has done, they respond in a number of ways (cf. 4:31; 12:27): they revere Yahweh; they believe in Yahweh; they believe in Yahweh’s servant Moses; and they sing a song of praise to God for the life and blessing that had become theirs this day. Somewhat unsettling is the fact that the same language of belief is used for Moses as well as for God. The one who serves as an instrument of God’s word and action must be trusted as one who truly represents, indeed embodies, the God in whose name he speaks. This lifts up the extraordinary importance of the leader in the relationship between God and people. But it is God alone who is revered and worshiped and to whom Israel’s doxologies are sung. Without such a response, the great deeds of God would have been without a voice in the world. God’s goal, to have the divine name declared to all the earth (9:16; see Josh. 4:24), would have been set back. The importance of this witness is now given prominence with the insertion of the songs in chapter 15.
The end (telos) follows in order the resurrection of the righteous. This is not indicated here as a definite or fixed time, but rather as the consummation of the whole plan and purpose of God for the ages. Upon His return Christ shall render null and void all power that exists in opposition to righteousness. The words all, rule, authority and power probably are meant to summarize all existing opposition to righteousness, rather than three particular orders, though Vincent says they are “abstract terms for different orders of spiritual and angelic powers.” (Eph. 1:21; 3:10; 6:12; Col. 1:16). Hodge thinks the reference to Christ delivering “up the kingdom to the God and Father” (NASB) pertains only to
that dominion to which he [Christ] was exalted after his resurrection, when all power in heaven and earth was committed to his hand. This kingdom, which he exercises as the Theanthropos, and which extends over all principalities and powers, he is to deliver up when the work of redemption is accomplished.
The reign of Christ is what Morris calls “a career of conquest.” It may sometimes appear that evil is winning the day in the life of a believer, the Church, or the world. This is, however, only an apparent victory for evil—temporary at most. In the end Christ will stand victor over all forces of evil. This must be so because Christ is God. He will reign until God’s purpose for His dominion is realized (Ps. 110:1). No man can ultimately lose the battle of life if he is on Christ’s side, and no man or nation can ultimately win if he or it is not on Christ’s side.
According to verse 26 the reign of death will terminate at the resurrection. Thereafter no one will be subject to its power. Death will then be swallowed up in the victory of the resurrection (Luke 20:26). Immortality will be injected into creatures hitherto subject to death and the fatal germs of mortality will be forever destroyed. Just as medicine destroys the disease germs that prevent health and thus allow nature to restore and maintain the health of the human body, so the life-giving power of Christ’s resurrection will forever destroy the disease germs of mortality and thus free man for the uninhabited immortality for which God created him. (Rom. 8:11).