Wait... What Sea? Contributed by Nathaniel Hevenstone Source

Wait... What Sea? Contributed by Nathaniel Hevenstone Source: Before we embark upon singing Dayenu and finally drinking those second cups of water and wine (which symbolize our readiness to FINALLY EAT FOOD!), we have to touch on the actual exodus itself, including exactly which sea the Israelites fled to and through, and final thoughts on whether or not it actually happened. So let's start with the question... which sea? The common interpretation is the Red Sea. The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, splitting Africa and Asia and essentially defining the Middle East. From Wikipedia... The Red Sea has a surface area of roughly 438,000 km2 (169,100 mi2),[1] is about 2250 km (1398 mi) long, and — at its widest point — 355 km (220.6 mi) wide. It has an average depth of 490 m (1,608 ft), and in the central Suakin Trough it reaches its maximum depth of 3,040 m (9,970 ft).[2] It's easy to see why this is the sea in the common story. Imagine how epic that would have been, if the Israelites had crossed through such a deep sea. ,(י ַם-סו ּף) In point of fact, however, the Torah refers to the location of the crossing as Yam Suph which translates directly to Sea (yam) of Reeds (suph). Now, "suph" didn't always refer to "reeds" when used in the Torah, but it had never been used to refer to "red". In fact, the idea of "the Red Sea" being the place of crossing comes from a mistranslation in the Septuagint (one of many mistranslations from the biblical Hebrew to the ancient Greek that would forever alter the meaning of Hebrew passages and the narratives told from such passages... another example being Isaiah 7:14, the so-called "virgin-birth prophecy" that... isn't). It's likely that the scholars writing the translation had merely assumed that the Red Sea is where the crossing occured, and so wrote that into the narrative rather than sticking to a more direct, and thus accurate, translation. So what is the Sea of Reeds? No one's really sure... Again, from Wikipeda... Proposals for the location of the yam suph of Exodus are manifold. It may refer to a large lake close to the Red Sea, which has since dried up due to the Suez Canal. It was in Egypt, specifically in the Suez valley next to the Sinai Peninsula, and north of the Gulf of Suez. It could also be the Gulf of Eilat, which is referred to as the yam suph in the Books of Kings (1 Kings 9:26). The Lake of Tanis, a former coastal lagoon fed by the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, has also been proposed as the place Moses parted the waters. Heinrich Brugsch suggested that the Reed Sea is Sabḫat al Bardawīl, a large lagoon on the north coast of the Sinai Peninsula. So why is no one sure? Most scholars today largely agree that the Exodus is threaded together by a number of oral traditions. In this case, one tradition says it was the Reed Sea, where the Egyptians were defeated when the wheels of their chariots got clogged and they were unable to follow the Israelites on foot for similar reasons. Although it's not known for sure, the string of shallow lakes and marshes extending from the Suez north to the Mediterranean sea are considered by some scholars to be the actual location referred to in the Torah. Another tradition does indeed refer to the Red Sea, which mainly just allows for a far more dramatic telling of the story. I mean... which one is more exicting... the Israelites had enough of a head start that they could clog their way through the sticky marshes of the Reed Sea, which was deep enough to stop chariots, but shallow enough to cross on foot with enough time (hypothetically... we don't actually know what the Reed Sea was at the time), or the one where the Israelites were trapped between the Egyptians and a deep, imposing salt-water sea, then God, through Moses, performed yet another miracle, splitting the sea and allowing the Israelites to cross on dry land, before allowing the sea to pour back onto the Egyptians, drowning them and saving the Israelites?.

Load more