Was the “Red Sea” through which the Israelites passed merely a shallow “Reed Sea”? Did the Israelites walk through shallow water to reach salvation on the other side?
The Hebrew words translated in our Bibles as “Red Sea” are yam suf. Yam, of course, means “sea”. For centuries it has been assumed that Hebrew suf referred to swamp plants, or “reeds”. And so it is translated in Hebrew dictionaries.
Unfortunately, some scholars often try to explain away the miraculous. In this case, the writers of some study material and Sunday School quarterlies have attempted to make the crossing less than a miracle. They postulate that the Israelites simply walked across a shallow swamp.
That may work alright for the Israelites. However, the other event, the drowning of all of Pharaoh’s army, is then unexplained. Wouldn’t it be a miracle if the army drowned in only a few inches of water? Whatever one believes, truly there was a great miracle here. Is it any harder to believe that a body of water actually parted to let the Israelites go through, then came together again to drown the Egyptians? What was this body of water?
The Septuagint (LXX) translators (from Hebrew to Greek) rendered yam suf as eruthra thalassa. This means “red sea.” No one has discovered yet how they got “red” from suf. Nor did they always translate sufas “red,” either. In 1 Kgs. 9:26 it is translated the “extremity of the sea.” (see also Ju. 11:16 for a different rendering.) Other sources of that time applied erutthra thalassa: to the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean and, of course, to the Red Sea. Thus, it applied to the Gulf of Aqaba as well as to the Gulf of Suez (Ex. 23:31; Deut. 1:40, 2.1; 1 Kgs. 9:26).
The point to all this is that, regardless of the translation, the sea referred to was the equivalent of other deep seas, not just some shallow swamp. The Gulf of Aqaba, for instance, is quite deep even close to shore (and is full of the most delightful and beautiful sea life).
Although no one can finally answer the question “Reed Sea or Red Sea?,” it does not really matter what it is translated. It obviously was plenty deep enough to require a tremendous miracle for Israel to pass through while drowning Pharaoh’s army.
The entire event of the destruction of Pharaoh’s army is a continuation of the series of plagues God miraculously wrought upon Egypt. Yam was one of the gods of
BSP 1:2 (Spring 1988) p. 5
Egypt (as well as of the Canaanites}. Mantled Lurker describes the religious meaning of the Sea to Egyptians,
The primeval ocean, a sluggish, chaotic expanse of water, was the basic reality in all Egyptian cosmogonies out of which the world emerged… “The primeval waters were embodied by the god Nun whose temporal precendence was expressed in the title ‘father of the gods’ [the source of the pantheon] …. According to the ‘Book of the Heavenly Cow’ the sun-god Re addresses Nun as ‘O you, the eldest of the gods from whom I emerged.’”1
To the Egyptians then, the Sea god, Nun, was the source of life and all things. However, because the Egyptians worshipped the creation rather than the Creator, Jehovah allowed their ‘father of the gods’, the “benefactor’ of all Egypt, to swallow up the whole Egyptian army. In this way Jehovah, the God of Israel, demonstrated through this eleventh “plague” that He alone reigns supreme and is the True Source of all things.
In fact, the Lord performed this miracle in the “presence” of the god of mariners, Baal-Zephon (Ex. 14:2}. Although a Canaanite god, Baal-Zephon (“lord of the north”) was revered by the Egyptians also. His function was to protect mariners from storms at sea. But although his temple apparently overlooked the area where this mighty miracle took place, he “sat” helplessly by, impotent to do anything.
[Adapted from a paper by Associate Professor James Hoffmeier (Wheaton College) given at a symposium on the Exodus and Conquest in April, 1987.]
Pyramid and Sphinx