YHWH Battles the Egyptians with a Fiery Cloud

Some scholars claim that this is an artificial supplement, written in the style of the murmuring stories, and really has nothing to do with Pharaoh chasing them, but was put in as a backstory for God’s later complaint that Moses is crying out to him. See Christoph Levin, Der Jahwist, FRLANT 157 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992) 76, 346; Jan Christian Gertz, “The Miracle at the Sea: Remarks on the Recent Discussion about Origin and Composition of the Exodus Narrative,” in The Book of Exodus: Composition, Reception, and Interpretation, ed. Thomas B. Dozeman, Craig A. Evans, Joel N. Lohr, VTsupp 164 (Leiden: Brill, 2014) 91–120 [p. 114]. This is problematic, since a later scribe surely could have integrated this better. For a discussion of how this murmuring complaint fits in context with the other such complaints in Exodus, see Rainer Albertz, “Wilderness Material in Exodus (Exodus 15–18),” in The Book of Exodus, 151–168.

In context, this comes immediately after the stoppoing of the sun and is tied to that miracle. For an argument that the phrase should really be attached to the hail story, see Zev I. Farber, “Snippets of a Lost Joshua Cycle,” in “Now It Happened in Those Days” Studies in Biblical, Assyrian, and Other Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presented to Mordechai Cogan on His 75th Birthday, ed. Amitai Baruchi-Unna, Tova Forti, Shmuel Aḥituv, Israel Ephʿal, and Jeffrey H. Tigay (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2017), 1.43–60 [50–51]; Zev I. Farber and Jacob L. Wright, “The Savior of Gibeon Reconstructing the Prehistory of the Joshua Account,” in Book-Seams in the Hexateuch I: The Literary Transitions between the Books of Genesis/Exodus and Joshua/Judges, ed. Christoph Berner and Harald Samuel (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 295–310 [303–304].

See also Gideon’s battle against the Midianites (Judg 7:22–23), in which YHWH causes the enemy to turn on each other, and then they flee (וַיָּנָס) with the Israelites in pursuit (וַיִּרְדְּפוּ), and Samuel’s battle with the Philistines (1 Sam 7:10–11), in which YHWH throws the enemy into a panic (וַיְהֻמֵּם) and the Israelites pursue (וַיִּרְדְּפוּ). These two are less connected in terms of vocabulary, but they are thematically and even literarily linked.

The Greek is συνέδησεν. This seems to me to be the better reading, since removing the chariots wheels will make it fall apart, not move forward slowly. Moreover, it forms a nice wordplay off the opening of the story, in which the King of Egypt וַיֶּאְסֹר אֶת רִכְבּוֹ “made ready his chariot” (Exod 14:6).

The first part of the verse seems to be part of a different storyline. Making the Egyptians stuck and unable to move quickly seems designed to make sure that they were far behind the Israelites in the pursuit and could not escape the oncoming rush of water when the wind ceased blowing. Moreover, it seems to interrupt between the Egyptians seeing YHWH in the fiery cloud and their panic reaction. One could suggest, as William H.C. Propp does in his commentary (Exodus 1–18, Anchor Bible [New York: Doubleday, 1999], 500), that the goal of this verse was to make the Egyptians flee on foot, which is closely parallel to Sisera getting off his chariot and running on foot. Nevertheless, in that story, the army remains on their chariots, and the point of Sisera getting off is to allow for the scene when Yael kills him in a tent. Also, see Jacob L. Wright, “Yael and the Subversion of Male Leaders in Judges,” TheTorah (2018), who argues that the half verse about Sisera running away, and the entire Yael episode, is a later redaction, and in the earlier story, Barak simply chased down Sisera’s army and killed them all (including him). In any event, in our story, the notice about locking the wheels fits better with the drowning story than the YHWH-fighting story.

I present here the common documentary, two-source solution as described in Joel Baden, The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis (Anchor Bible Yale Reference Library; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), case study four; Jean Louis Ska, Introduction to the Reading of the Pentateuch, trans. Sr. Pascale Dominique (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006 [orig. Italian, 1998]), 68-75.

In the Priestly story, the Israelites turn back from the edge of the wilderness and encamp by the sea. When the Egyptians appear, YHWH commands Moses to stretch out his hand across the sea. Moses does so and the sea splits. The Israelites cross through the sea, with walls of water on each side, and the Egyptians follow. When the Israelites get to the other side, Moses stretches out his arm over the sea again, the water goes back to normal, and the Egyptians are drowned in the middle of the sea. In this story, the shift in how the water is standing, from normal, to split, back to normal is instantaneous; when Moses stretches out his arm, the water responds. In the non-Priestly story, the Israelites are travelling near Yam Suph, the Sea of Rushes, when the Egyptians arrive. The Israelites cry out to God, and God tells them to keep moving. An angel of God moves to the back of the camp, to separate the Egyptians from the Israelites. All through the night, a wind blows the sea back from the shore, and the Egyptians, unbeknownst to them, find themselves on the part of the coast that was once under water. Towards morning, the wind stops blowing, and the water rushes back to the shore in a tidal wave and drowns the Egyptian army. For a basic source division and explanation along these lines, see TABS Editors, “What Really Happened at the Sea?” TheTorah (2015). For a different approach, using the supplementary hypothesis, see Tzemah Yoreh, “Israel's Departure from Egypt: A Liberation or an Escape?” TheTorah (2016).

Some scholars associate the drowning by tidal wave with J, but the question would then just be whether E had such a story. The difficulty is isolating three stories here.

Benjamin Wisner Bacon, The Triple Tradition of the Exodus: A Study of the Structure of the Later Pentateuchal Books, Reproducing the Sources of the Narrative, and Further Illustrating the Presence of Bibles Within the Bible (Hartford, CT: The Student Publishing Company, 1894), 66–80. The book deals with the whole exodus account, from the enslavement to the wilderness wandering. The section about the escape by the sea is part 3. Notably, this was Bacon’s second and last book on the Hebrew Bible—his first was The Genesis of Genesis (1891); he was primarily a New Testament scholar, at least after this.

Richard Elliott Friedman (The Bible with Sources Revealed [Harper San Francisco, 2003], 142–146) also attempts to reconstruct three sources, all of which deal with escape by the sea, and there too, E is so choppy that it is virtually impossible to get a sense of any storyline.

Two examples may help clarify the point. Scholars have long noted that the originally Elohistic story of the binding of Isaac (Gen 22) has been revised by a Yahwistic editor (whether this was the compiler or some earlier editor is not relevant here). Moreover, many have argued that in the original E story, Abraham actually sacrifices his son. Indeed, the entire E core is easily identified, including the scene in which Abraham goes home by himself. The one thing missing is the actual killing of the boy, something like וישחט את בנו “and he slaughtered his son,” which was likely once the ending of verse 10. This needed to be cut, since otherwise, the contradiction is too stark. See discussion in Tzemah Yoreh, “The Sacrifice of Isaac in Context: Recovering a Lost Ending of the Akedah,” TheTorah (2014). Similarly, the Torah contains two different burial traditions for Jacob (Gen 50). In J, he is buried in Goren HaAtad, but in P, he is buried in the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron. Both stories are spliced together in the Torah and remain almost intact, including the large funeral in Goren HaAtad. Nevertheless, a phrase to the effect that they buried Jacob at Goren HaAtad is missing: something like ויקברו אותו שם “and they buried him there,” was likely once part of verse 10. Again, this had to be cut because it too starkly contradicts the other story. See David Ben-Gad HaCohen, “Mourning for Jacob at Goren HaAtad,” TheTorah (2014). In all of these cases, we are likely speaking of only half a verse or so of material.

In its current context, the phrase implies that the Egyptians are confused and thus running towards the tidal wave.

^{שמות יד:כז} ...וַיָּשָׁב הַיָּם לִפְנוֹת בֹּקֶר לְאֵיתָנוֹ וּמִצְרַיִם נָסִים לִקְרָאתוֹ וַיְנַעֵר יְ־הוָה אֶת מִצְרַיִם בְּתוֹךְ הַיָּם.

^{Exod 14:27} …and at daybreak the sea returned to its normal state, and the Egyptians were fleeing towards it and YHWH hurled the Egyptians into the sea.

But this storyline is a chimerical creation of the compiler. The natural way to escape Egypt on route to the Land of Canaan is to go east and cross the frontier line, which was made of a manmade canal connecting a row of natural lakes between the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Suez. In E, that would mean they were travelling either north or south of one of the lakes. If the Egyptians turn back in panic in this story, they would not run towards the water (on the north or south) but west, back to Egypt. This holds for the Priestly story of the split sea as well. In short, even panicked, there is little reason for the Egyptians to run towards the water in either story. This geographic problem fits with the linguistic observation made above, and shows that this phrase does not fit with the other parts of this verse, but comes from the J story. My suggestion is that if they are fleeing from the cloud, then the “it” in this phrase is the cloud, which they are accidentally fleeing towards since YHWH, with his cloud, moves from in front of them to behind them (see next note). The previous and following clauses, in contrast, are both part of the E drowning story: when the wind dies down the next morning, the tidal wave wipes out the Egyptians. In E, the Egyptians aren’t fleeing, but plodding along slowly, since their chariot wheels are locked.

In the Pentateuch as we have it now, this line comes earlier in the story:

^{שמות יד:יט} וַיִּסַּע מַלְאַךְ הָאֱלֹהִים הַהֹלֵךְ לִפְנֵי מַחֲנֵה יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיֵּלֶךְ מֵאַחֲרֵיהֶם וַיִּסַּע עַמּוּד הֶעָנָן מִפְּנֵיהֶם וַיַּעֲמֹד מֵאַחֲרֵיהֶם. ^יד:כ וַיָּבֹא בֵּין מַחֲנֵה מִצְרַיִם וּבֵין מַחֲנֵה יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיְהִי הֶעָנָן וְהַחֹשֶׁךְ [תה"ש: ויהי חשך וערפל/ואפלה (καὶ ἐγένετο σκότος καὶ γνόφος)] וַיָּאֶר אֶת הַלָּיְלָה [תה"ש: ותאר הלילה (καὶ διῆλθεν ἡ νύξ)] וְלֹא קָרַב זֶה אֶל זֶה כָּל הַלָּיְלָה.

^{Exod 14:19} The angel of God, who had been going ahead of the Israelite army, now moved and followed behind them; and the pillar of cloud shifted from in front of them and took up a place behind them, ^14:20 and it came between the army of the Egyptians and the army of Israel. There was the cloud with the darkness [LXX: “there was thick darkness”], and it lit up the night (or: “cast a spell over the night” [NJPS]) [LXX: “and the night elapsed”], so that the one could not come near the other all through the night.

The cloud is a doublet for the angel, and is likely from another source (see Friedman, Bible with Sources Revealed, 143). The angel is clearly part of the E text, and it is necessary to keep the armies apart from each other. The cloud, however, is from the J text, but I suggest its original placement was later in the story, after YHWH appears in the pillar of cloud before the Egyptians to do battle with them. (For another example of a text cut from its place and spliced elsewhere, see David Ben-Gad Cohen, “Why Deuteronomy Has an Account of Aaron's Death in the Wrong Place,” TheTorah [2015].) When they run away, YHWH and his cloud move behind them to cut them off at the pass (see previous note). The compiler moved this phrase to its current spot to avoid the implication that the Egyptians die by running into YHWH’s cloud, and put it back-to-back with the angel moving behind the Israelite camp due to the similarity in wording

This reconstruction is very speculative; the original words are missing and there is no way to recreate them precisely. My suggestion here connects to the theme of the fiery cloud (and makes use of the biblical idiom found in Numbers 11:1, though other ways to express this remain equally viable). Another option would be the simple, ויך י־הוה את מחנה מצרים “YHWH struck the Egyptian army,” just ויך אתם י־הוה “and YHWH struck them,” or variations on such language.

This is almost the exact language used at the end of the Sisera story. Given the intertextual connections between the Sisera account and that of YHWH’s fighting Egypt in the wilderness in J, this is likely part of the J account here.

This is likely part of the J story because YHWH saving (י.ש.ע) them “on that day” plays off Moses’ promise that YHWH will save them “this day.”

This is likely part of the J story because YHWH’s strong hand was במצרים “against Egypt,” the same term the Egyptians use, that YHWH is fighting במצרים “against Egypt.”

This connects to the theme of the J story: instead of being afraid (י.ר.א) of the Egyptians, Israel now fears (same root) YHWH.