Miracles do happen: A look at the biblical splitting of the Red Sea

The story of how the Hebrew people emerged in the ancient world as the only community believing in one God – the Almighty creator of the universe – is a story replete with signs, wonders, and miracles, all recounted in the first book of the Torah, Genesis. As we sit around the Seder table each Passover, we recall how this God-fearing community, enslaved in Egypt for 400 years, found the courage to cast off their shackles and start on the long journey toward becoming a free nation in their own land. 

That story is full of miraculous incidents, of which the parting of the Red Sea is perhaps the most mind-boggling. 

The episode, however, has been dogged by speculation and conjecture for hundreds of years. 

The account, appearing in Hebrew in the Torah, is quite specific. The Israelites were chased by the Egyptians in their horse-drawn chariots to the shore of the “Yam Suf.” The translation of “Yam Suf” is “Sea of Reeds.” Learned minds have pondered for some 2,500 years, reaching no real conclusion, whether the 72 Jewish scholars who translated the Old Testament into Greek, did indeed render “Sea of Reeds” into “Red Sea.”

It was Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the Greek pharaoh of Egypt, who commissioned the iconic translation. The 72 Jewish scholars – all of whom agreed on the final text – certainly reached a consensus when resolving some knotty translation problems. Seventeen are recorded in the Talmud. This is not one of them. So was it introduced in some later Greek version, along with the mistranslation of “young girl” into “virgin”? These remain some of the great unsolved mysteries surrounding the whole episode.

The rendering of “Sea of Reeds” into “Red Sea” in Greek translations was carried forward into the later Latin translation – the Vulgate – and from there into the versions in English and other European languages. The location of the Red Sea is obvious; that of the Sea of Reeds is much less so. What the biblical account tells us is that the Israelites, led by Moses and pursued by the Egyptian army, flee for their lives along a route prescribed by God. They come to the seashore. Ahead stretches the ocean. Behind them, the Egyptian army is camped for the night, preparing to bear down on them at first light.

“Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land.” (Exodus 14:21)

The Israelites crossed to the farther shore. When the Egyptian army tried to follow, the wheels of its chariots got clogged in the mud. As they struggled to get free, the wind dropped, the waters flooded back, and the entire Egyptian force was drowned.

This episode – the supreme miracle of the exodus – is so central to the identity of the Jewish people that the prayer-observant are reminded of it several times each day during the morning service. 

But, asked the late and much lamented Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks: “In what sense was it a miracle?”

Was the parting of the Red Sea really a miracle?

Closely examining the words of the Bible, Sacks distinguished two descriptions of the event – one a poetic account, in which the waters stood like a wall on either side of the Hebrews:

“…the waters piled up.

The surging waters stood firm like a wall;

The deep waters congealed in the heart of the sea.”

While in the other, “…the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land.”

Sacks described the former as purely supernatural, the latter as natural but no less compelling for all that. Perhaps the Israelites had arrived at the Sea of Reeds at a point at which it was shallow. Possibly there was a ridge in the sea bed, normally covered by water, but occasionally – when, for example, a fierce east wind blew – exposed. 

“To put it another way,” said Rabbi Sacks, “a miracle is not necessarily something that suspends natural law. It is, rather, an event for which there may be a natural explanation, but which – happening when, where, and how it did – evokes wonder, such that even the most hardened skeptic senses that God has intervened in history. The weak are saved; those in danger, delivered.”

IN SEPTEMBER 2010, the BBC, Reuters, and other news agencies reported on a sensational discovery. Scientists working at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado, were able to show, by way of computer simulation, how the parting of the Red Sea might have taken place.

Using sophisticated modeling, they demonstrated how a strong east wind, blowing overnight, could have pushed water back at a bend where an ancient river is believed to have merged with a coastal lagoon. 

The water would have been guided into the two waterways and a land bridge would have opened at the bend, allowing people to walk across the exposed mudflats. As soon as the wind died down, the waters would have rushed back in. As the leader of the project said, when the report was published, “The simulations match fairly closely with the account in Exodus.” 

In his book, The Miracles of Exodus, Cambridge University physicist Colin Humphreys writes: “Wind tides are well known to oceanographers. For example, a strong wind blowing along Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes, has produced water elevation differences of as much as sixteen feet between Toledo, Ohio, on the west, and Buffalo, New York, on the east...”

Whether or not these findings explain what happened on that fateful night of the 15th of Nissan, some 3,500 years ago, they have no bearing on its miraculous nature. It was miraculous not because the laws of nature were suspended. On the contrary, the computer simulation shows that exposure of dry land at a particular point in the Red Sea is what happens when there is a strong east wind. What made it miraculous is that it happened just there, just then, when the Israelites seemed trapped.

An event can seem to us, and indeed be, a miracle because it happens at a certain moment, not because the laws of nature have been broken. And if they seem to have been broken, it may be because we are ignorant of the real nature of those laws. That is what Rabbi Sacks taught. 

Other thinkers have said much the same. Daniel von Wachter is a professor of philosophy at the University of Liechtenstein. In 2015, he published an article that he called “Miracles are not violations of the Laws of Nature, because the laws do not entail regularities.” In other words, he maintains that although miracles are divine interventions, they are not violations of the laws of nature. Miracles are also not exceptions to the laws, nor do the laws not apply to them. The laws never have exceptions. It is because we do not know fully what those laws are, that we ascribe them to a supernatural “overriding” of natural law.

For example, until comparatively recently, any rational human being would have firmly believed that something cannot exist in two places at the same time. “Impossible” they would have said, echoing Alice in Through the Looking Glass:

“One can’t believe impossible things,” Alice says to the White Queen. 

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” says the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

The White Queen was well ahead of her time. Today quantum physics proves that giant molecules can occupy two places at once. The phenomenon is called “quantum superposition.” 

EVEN MORE impossible phenomena – miraculous if you like – are in the experimental stage. To take just one example: Researchers from NEC Research Institute in Princeton passed a laser beam through a chamber of specially prepared gas and clocked its time. The beam was observed to be 300 times faster than the speed of light. Incredibly, the beam exited the chamber before it had entered it, which appears to violate the law of cause and effect as theorized by Albert Einstein. 

However, the researchers explain, that law is not technically being broken since the future beam cannot affect the past. Regardless, the experiment managed to prove that the light-speed barrier can in fact be broken, and that effect can precede cause. 

Many wise words were uttered by the fourth-century philosopher and Berber convert to Christianity, Augustine of Hippo, later St. Augustine. One aphorism that has echoed down the centuries is: “Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.” 

The implication that we do not know everything about nature, true in his time, has remained true for two millennia. It will probably remain true for the next two. 

Meanwhile miracles – starting with the miracle of our own existence– will continue to amaze us. We can be assured that they do not amaze the Almighty. 

The writer’s latest book is Trump and the Holy Land 2016 – 2020. Follow him at: a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com■