forward the next day; for the mountainous ridges of the rocky valley,
along which we had come, continued close to the shore of the sea on
the right hand, and on the left, and I could perceive, as I walked to
the place, no room for a single man, much less an army, to go either
south or north between the mountains and the water; for the sea broke
with its waves against its perpendicular sides. I concluded,
therefore, that on the morrow the whole host would have to retrace its
steps, and enter the desert by the way of Etham, where it had before
encamped, and so make a sweep around the head of the sea to the
northward and eastward. But I did not express to any one my thoughts.
The calm majesty and repose of Moses awed me. Upon his expansive brow
was stamped confidence in his God, who, if need were, could make a
road across the sea for His people, for whose deliverance He had done
such wonders. I reflected, too, that the leader was God himself, and
that He had gone before, and led them to the place where they were. I
therefore waited the will of God, to see what in His wisdom He would
do.
How little did I anticipate the end! How far was I from understanding
that God had led His people into this defile, which had no outlet but
that by which they entered, in order to display His glory, and present
to the world the final exhibition of His power, and his judgments upon
Pharaoh and the Egyptians!
The divinely inspired Moses seemed to understand my thoughts, when I
returned to the camp.
"My son," he said, "this is done to try Pharaoh; for, when he heareth
that we are in the valley of Pi-hahiroth, before Migdol, he will say,
'They are entangled in the land--the wilderness hath shut them in.'
'Then,' saith the Lord to me, 'Pharaoh will repent that he let you and
my people go, and he will follow after you, and when he shall come
after you, I will be honored upon Pharaoh and upon all his host; that
the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord.' God will yet avenge
Himself upon this wicked king, and reward him for all his wickedness
that he hath done against Him and His people Israel! Wait, and thou
shalt see the power of God, indeed!"
With what expectation, and with what confidence in God I waited the
result, my dear father, you may conceive. How wonderful is this God,
and His ways how past finding out! "It was just four hundred and
thirty years from the day Israel left Egypt," said Aaron to me, "to
the day their father Abram left Chaldea for Canaan; and that, their
books say, is the exact time prophesied for their deliverance. Their
actual residence in Egypt from the Syrian Prince Jacob's coming to
settle in Goshen, to the day they left, was two hundred and fifteen
years. The existence of their _bondage_ began at the death of Joseph,
who died sixty-five years, not seventy, as you supposed, before the
birth of Moses. This servant of God is now eighty years old;
therefore, the number of years _that they were in servitude_ is one
hundred and forty-five, or equal to five generations. Thus, were the
descendants of Abraham, and Abraham himself, wanderers without any
country of their own for four hundred and thirty years, according to
the word of the Lord to Abraham; not all this time in bondage, indeed,
but under kings of another language. Now, at length behold them
returning a mighty nation, to claim from the Canaanites and
Philistines the land so long ago promised to their remote ancestor,
Abram. God is not forgetful of His promise, as this vast multitude
proclaims to the world, though He seems to wait; but His purposes must
ripen, and with the Almighty a day is as a thousand years, and a
thousand years as one day."
Now behold, my dear father, a new manifestation of His glory and
power, and the awful majesty of His judgments, before whom no man can
stand and live! The next day, being the seventh, whereon a divine
tradition ordains rest, but which in their bondage could not be
regarded, Moses and Aaron commanded the whole host to repose. Thus
time was given Pharaoh, not only to hear the report,--as he did by
some Egyptians who, in dread of the wilderness, went back,--of their
being shut in by the craggy mountains, with the sea before them,--but
to arm and to pursue and destroy them or compel them to submit again
to his yoke.
I have learned from an officer of Pharaoh, who, fearing God, escaped
from the palace, and came and informed Moses of the king's purposes,
that when the news reached the king, who had been three days bitterly
repenting his compliance with the demands of Moses, he sprang from the
table at which he sat, and, with a great oath by his gods, cried--
"They are entangled between Pi-hahiroth and the sea! They have played
me false, and are not gone by Etham into the desert to sacrifice!
Their God has bewildered them in the Valley of Rocks by the sea! Now,
by the life of Osiris, I will up and pursue them!" He called all his
lords and officers, and gave commands to send couriers to the army
already assembled at Bubastis, and expecting to march against the king
of Edom, who had long menaced Egypt. He ordered this army to hasten,
by forced marches, to the plain before On. He then sent to the city,
where he kept his six hundred chosen chariots of war, for them to be
harnessed, and meet him the next day before Raamses. Couriers on fleet
horses were sent to every garrison, and all the chariots in other
cities, and in the three treasure-cities, to the number of four
thousand charioteers, each with his armed soldier, gathered on the
plain which the Israelites had left four days before. The forty-seven
fortresses of the provinces sent forth their garrisons, of three and
four hundred men each, to swell the Egyptian hosts.
All this intelligence reached Moses; but he remained immovable in his
camp, the Pillar of Fire also standing in the air above the tent of
Aaron, in which was the sarcophagus of Prince Joseph. Messenger after
messenger, sometimes an Egyptian friendly to the Israelites, sometimes
an Israelite who had been detained and did not leave Egypt with his
brethren, came to Moses, and as they passed through the camp, gave up
their news to the people.
One man said Pharaoh had left his palace, armed in full battle-armor,
and at the head of his body-guard of six hundred chariots of gold and
ivory, was driving to the plain of Raamses. A second messenger brought
tidings, that the king's great army, from the vicinity of Bubastis and
Pelusium, had passed On in full march,--seventy thousand foot, ten
thousand horsemen, and two thousand chariots of iron! A third came,
reporting that four thousand chariots had also assembled from all
parts of Lower Egypt, and that every man was rallying to the standard
of the king, to pursue the Hebrews and destroy them by the edge of the
sword. By and by, a fourth came, an escaped Hebrew, who told that the
king had marshalled his vast hosts of one hundred thousand foot,
twenty thousand horsemen, nine thousand chariots of iron, besides his
six hundred chosen chariots of his body-guard, and was in full pursuit
of the Israelites by the way of Succoth.
These tidings filled the bosoms of the Hebrews with dismay. They were
in no condition to do battle, there being among them all, one only who
knew the use of arms, which one was Moses; who, with God on his side,
was an army in himself.
The Egyptian army, marched all night, without rest to hoof or sandal.
Before the sun was up, their approach was made known by the distant
thunder of their chariot-wheels, and the tramp of their horses. At
length, when the Pillar of Fire was fading into a white cloud, and the
sun rose brilliantly over the Sea of Arabia, the van of the Egyptian
army became visible, advancing down the inclosed valley. When the
Israelites beheld its warlike front, and heard the clangor of
war-trumpets and the deep roll of the drums, they fled with fear. The
elders then hastened, and, pale with terror and anger, came before
Moses, and cried to him--
"Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die
here in the wilderness? Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us to
carry us forth out of Egypt? Did we not, at the first, tell thee in
Egypt, 'Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians?' for it had
been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in
the wilderness."
Then Moses answered their tumult, and said, without displeasure
visible in his godlike countenance--
"Fear ye not! Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he
will show you to-day! for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to-day, ye
shall see them again no more forever! The Lord shall fight for you,
and ye shall hold your peace. Wait to see what He will do."
Then Moses, with a troubled face, entered his tent, and his voice was
heard by those near by, calling upon God.
And the Lord answered him from the cloud above the tent--
"Why criest thou unto me? Speak unto the children of Israel _that they
go forward_! But lift thou up thy rod and stretch out thy hand over
the sea, and divide it; and the children of Israel shall go on dry
ground through the midst of the sea. And behold Pharaoh, (whom I
withhold from nothing which he chooseth in his hard heart to do,
leaving him to his own devices to reap the fruit of his own ways), he
shall follow you with the Egyptians into the sea! and I will get me
honor upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host, upon his chariots and upon
his horsemen. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord!"
Then Moses came forth from the tent, whence the voice of the Lord had
been heard by all, both near and afar off. Now, lo! the angel of God
in the Pillar of Cloud, as soon as the armies of Israel began to move
forward to the sea, removed from the front, and went to the rear of
the Hebrew host, and stood behind them in the Pillar of Cloud! Thus,
it stood between the camp of the Israelites and the camp of the
Egyptians, so that when night came, the Israelites, lying encamped on
the shore, had the full splendor of its light; while the Egyptians, to
whom it presented a wall of impenetrable darkness, also encamped,
fearing to go forward in the unnatural night which enveloped them. So
the two hosts remained all night, neither moving--the Pillar of Fire
and the Pillar of Cloud between them, creating day on one side of it,
and tenfold night on the other.
Now, at the going down of the sun, on that day when the Egyptians
encamped because of the cloud, Moses had stretched forth his hand over
the sea by God's command, and lo! there arose a mighty wind upon the
sea, rising from the south and east; and all that night we heard the
sea and waves roaring, and the hearts of Israel sunk within them for
fear. The Pillar of Fire cast upon the sea a radiance like moonlight,
so that we could perceive that it was in a great commotion, and that
God was doing some great wonder in the deep. It is said that the noise
of the waves reached the ears of Pharaoh, and that he at first
believed it was the sound of the tramping of the whole host of the
Israelites, advancing with their God to give him battle in the
darkness. He called his men to arms, and tried to show front of war;
but the shadow of the cloud between him and the Hebrews, rendered it
impossible for any man to move from one place to another, or to see
his fellow.
At length morning came to us, but not to the Egyptians, whose night
still continued. But what a spectacle of sublimity and power we
beheld! Before us, an avenue, broad enough for two hundred men to
march abreast, had been cut by the rod of God through the deep sea,
the water of which stood as a wall on the one side and on the other,
glittering like ice on the sides of the rocks of Libanus, when capped
with his snows. At this sight, the Hebrew hosts raised a shout of joy
to God, for they could see that the sacred avenue reached as far as
the eye could extend across the sea; but so great was the distance,
that its sides converged to a point far out from the shore, and seemed
but a hair line. Then Moses, lifting up his voice, commanded the
children of Israel to form into companies and columns of one hundred
and eighty men abreast, and enter the sea by the way God had opened
for them. First went Aaron and the twelve elders, being one of each
tribe, who guarded the body of Prince Joseph. Then followed the
sarcophagus, drawn by twelve oxen, one also furnished by each tribe.
Then came a hundred Levites, carrying all the sacred things which the
Hebrews had preserved in their generations. Now came Moses, leading
the van of the people in column. I also walked near him. As we
descended the shore and entered the crystalline road, I marvelled, yet
had no fear, to see the walls of water, as if congealed to ice, rise
thirty cubits above our heads, firm as if hewn from marble, with sharp
edges at the top catching and reflecting the sunlight. The bed of the
sea was hard and dry sand, smooth as the paved avenue from Memphis to
the pyramids. All day the Israelites marched in, and when night came
not half their vast column had left the land. All the while the Pillar
of Cloud stood behind, in the defile between the Israelites and the
Egyptians. At length, in the first watch of the night, it removed, and
came and went before the Israelites, throwing its beams forward along
our path in the sea. Its disappearance from the rear removed also the
supernatural darkness that enveloped the Egyptians; and when, by the
light of the skies, Pharaoh beheld the Israelites in motion, he
pursued with all his host, leading with his chariots his eager army.
It was just light enough for him to see that his enemy was escaping,
but not enough so to see by what way; but, doubtless, he suspected
that they were wading around the mountains; for great east winds have,
from time to time, swept the sea here outward, so that the water has
been shallow enough for persons to make a circuitous ford around the
northern cliff, and come in again upon the same shore into the desert
above. Pharaoh knew that the wind had been blowing heavily, which he
at first mistook for the Israelites in motion, and there is no doubt
that he pursued with the idea that the sea had been shoaled by the
wind, and that they would come out a mile or two on the north side,
and gain the desert by Etham, and so double the head of the sea into
the peninsula of Horeb. There can be no other reason assigned for his
pursuit into such a road of God's power, unless it was judicial
madness,--a hardening of his heart by God, in punishment for his
contumacy and opposition to His will. Doubtless this is one way in
which God punishes men, by making their peculiar sin the instrument of
their destruction.
Pharaoh and his chariots, and horsemen, and host pursued, and came
close upon the rear-guard of the Israelites, against whom they pressed
with shouts of battle. The sea was faintly lighted, and the king and
the Egyptians did not see the walls of water which inclosed them, as
they rushed madly and blindly after their prey, urged on by the loud
voice of Pharaoh. At length, when they were in the midst of the sea,
the Lord, in the Pillar of Cloud, suddenly turned and displayed its
side of dazzling light towards the astonished Egyptians! By its
sunlike splendor, Pharaoh and his captains perceived their peril, and
the nature of the dreadful road in which they were entangled. The
walls of water on each side of them, say the Israelites who were in
the rear and saw, moved and swelled, and hung above them in stupendous
scrolls of living water, upheld only by the word of God! The vivid
light of the shekinah blinded their eyes, and bewildered their horses,
and troubled the whole host. All the horrors of his situation were
presented to the mind of the king. With frantic shouts to his
charioteers to turn back, he gave wild orders for his army to retreat,
saying--
"Let us flee from the face of Israel! for the Lord their God fighteth
for them against us!"
Then followed a scene of the most horrible confusion. The steady gaze
upon them of the Angel of the Lord, in the cloud of fire, discomfited
them! They turned to fly! Their chariot-wheels sunk in the deep clay
which the wagons of the Hebrews had cut up, and came off! The king
leaped from his car, and, mounting a horse held by his armor-bearer,
attempted to escape, when the Lord said unto Moses, who now stood upon
the Arabian side of the sea--
"Stretch out thine hand over the sea, that the waters may come again
upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen."
Then Moses stretched forth his hand upon the sea, in the deep defile
of which, cleaved by God for his own people, the Egyptian hosts,
chariots, horse and foot, were struggling to retrace their course to
the Egyptian shore, each man battling with his comrade for preference
in advance. The whole scene, for several miles in the midst of the
sea, was a spectacle of terror and despair such as no war, no battle,
nothing under the skies, ever before presented. The shouts and cries
of the Egyptians reached our ears upon the shore with appalling
distinctness.
Now Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, out of the path
through which the last of the Israelites were coming forth, when the
billows that had been cloven by the rod of God, and made to stand in
two walls like adamant, began to swell and heave, and all at once both
edges of this sea-wall fell over like two mighty cataracts plunging
and meeting, roaring and rushing together each into the chasm wherein
the whole host of Pharaoh--his captains, chariots, and horsemen--with
their faces towards Egypt, were struggling to escape from the snare
that God, in His just vengeance, had laid for them. The returning
waters covered the whole host of them before our eyes, and, while we
looked, the wild sea rolled its huge waves, laden with death, above
the abyss; and then subsiding, the great sea once more flowed calmly
over the spot, and Pharaoh, who had been erecting for years a majestic
pyramid to receive his embalmed body, was buried by the God whom he
defied, beneath the chariots and horses in which he trusted for
victory over the sons of God.
This spectacle of God's power and judgment filled all Israel with awe.
Those who had murmured against Moses sought his presence, and
prostrated themselves before him, acknowledging their fault, and
asking him to entreat God to pardon their iniquity, declaring that
henceforth they would receive the voice of Moses as the voice of God.
That day the Israelites encamped on the shore; and all night the waves
cast upon the coast the dead bodies of Pharaoh's host, and chariots
innumerable, with their stores of quivers of arrows, lances, swords,
and spears; so that the men of Israel, to the number of one hundred
thousand chosen out of each tribe, save that of Aaron were armed from
the spoils of the dead soldiers and chariots. Was not this, also, the
finger of God, O my father! The impression made upon the minds of the
children of Israel, by this wonderful exhibition of the power of
God,--of His goodness to them and His vengeance upon Pharaoh,--was
such that they believed God, and feared Him, and professed themselves
ready henceforth to be obedient to His voice.
When Moses and the children of Israel saw that their enemies were
dead, they chanted a sublime hymn of praise and triumph to God upon
the shore. Then came Miriam, the sister of Aaron, the aged prophetess
of God, bearing a timbrel in her hand, and followed by an innumerable
company of maidens and daughters of Israel, each with her timbrel in
her hand, and singing songs of joy and triumph, while the virgins
danced before the Lord.
Now, my dear father, I have brought my letters nearly to a close. I
have recorded the most wonderful events earth ever saw, and displays
of Divine power which man has never before witnessed. In contemplating
these wonders, you will be impressed with the terrible majesty of God,
and overwhelmed by His greatness. You will be struck with His
unwavering devotion and care for His people whom He hath chosen, and
with His unceasing vengeance upon His enemies, and such as oppress
those whom He protects. You will be awed and humbled with a sublime
perception of his limitless power in the heavens, on earth, and in the
sea; and feel deeply your own insignificance as a mere worm of the
dust in His sight; and you will cry with me, as I beheld all these
manifestations of His glorious power--
"What is man that thou art mindful of him, O God, who fillest the
heavens with the immensity of Thy presence, and in Thine own fulness
art all in all?"
From the Sea of Arabia, Moses led the armies of Israel, for three
encampments, into the wilderness towards Horeb. Here was no water but
that which was bitter; and the people murmuring, Moses pacified them
by a miracle. Thence they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of
water and seventy palm-trees, and here we encamped for some days.
After certain further wanderings, we came to a wilderness, just one
month after departing from Egypt, God, in all that time, taking not
away the Pillar of Cloud by day nor the Pillar of Fire by night from
before the people. Indeed, the whole journey was a miracle, and
attended by miracles; for in this wilderness, Sinn, their provisions
failed, and the people (who are a perverse and stiff-necked people,
forgetful of favors past, and rebellious--as is perhaps natural to
those who have been so long in bondage, and find themselves now free),
murmured, and again blamed Moses for bringing them from their fare of
flesh and bread in Egypt, to die of hunger in the wilderness. God,
instead of raining fire upon them, mercifully and graciously rained
bread from heaven to feed them, returning their want of faith in Him
with loving-kindness and pardon. And not only did God send bread from
heaven--which continues to fall every morning--but sent quails upon
the camp; so that they covered the whole plain. The taste of this
heavenly bread is like coriander-seed in wafers made with honey. It is
white, is called by the people manna, and is in quantities sufficient
for the whole of them. The camp thence moved forward and came into the
vale of Horeb, where I had first beheld Moses standing by his flock.
Here there was no water, and the people murmured in their thirst, and
again blamed Moses for bringing them out of Egypt into that
wilderness, not remembering the mighty deliverance at the Sea of
Arabia, nor the manna, nor the quails. At the first obstacle or
privation, they would ever cry out against Moses, who, one day,
exclaimed to his God, in his perplexity--
"What shall I do to this people? They are almost ready to stone me!"
Then the Lord commanded him to take his rod and strike the rock in
Horeb. He did so, and the water gushed forth in a mighty torrent, cool
and clear, and ran like a river, winding through all the camp.
We are now encamped before Horeb. From this mountain God has given,
amid thunders, and lightnings, and earthquakes, His laws to His
people, by which they are to walk in order to please Him. They are ten
in number: four relating to their duty to Him, and the remaining six
to their duty to one another. It would be impossible, my dear father,
for me to describe to you the awful aspect of Horeb, when God came
down upon it, hidden from the eye of Israel in a thick cloud, with the
thunders, and lightnings, and the voice of the trumpet of God
exceeding loud, so that all the camp trembled for dread and fear. Nor
could I give you any idea of the aspect of the Mount of God, from
which went up a smoke, as the smoke of a furnace, for seven days and
nights, and how the voice of the trumpet waxed louder and louder,
sounding long and with awful grandeur along the skies, calling Moses
to come up into the mount to receive His laws, while the light of the
glory of the Lord was like devouring fire. In obedience to the
terrible voice, Moses left Israel in the plain and ascended the mount.
Aaron and others of the elders accompanied him so near, that they saw
the pavement on which the God of Israel stood. It was, under His feet,
as a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in its
clearness.[2] He was absent forty days. When twenty days were passed
and they saw him not, nor knew what had happened to him, the whole
people murmured, became alarmed, believed that they would never see
him again, and resolved to return to Egypt if they could find a
leader. Aaron refused to go back with them; but at length they
compelled him to consent, if in seven days Moses returned not. At the
end of this period they called Aaron and shouted:
"Up! Choose us a captain to lead us back to Egypt."