Take Me to the Water

            The sea is a dangerous foe in the eyes of Scripture. It is the swirling, chaotic waters of the sea that God brings under control at the beginning of creation in Genesis 1. The sea brings forth life according to God’s command, but that life includes the fearful beast Leviathan in Job and the whale that swallows Jonah and holds him in its belly for three days. To cross the sea is to make an uncertain voyage to a distant land, to be cut off from the good and certain shores of Israel. Yet for whatever reason, the path of the Hebrew people fleeing from Egypt leads them right up to the edge of the sea. It didn’t have to be this way. The exodus takes place three thousand years before the Suez Canal was built. There were land routes that would have completely avoided the sea. Nonetheless, for whatever reason, the Hebrew people find themselves at a dead end: the sea on one side, and the Egyptian army closing in on the other.