First Light - Your Monday Devotion To Light Up Your Week: Saved Through The Sea
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The “sea” wasn’t something that was taken lightly by the people in the Ancient Near East. It was an image of chaos and destruction. When the Israelites ran into the Red (reed) Sea, they faced death in front of them, and could hear the sound of death (the Egyptian chariots) behind them. But this wouldn’t be the end of their story.
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Nicolas Poussin, Public Domain
The wind in that verse reaches back further than the chaos image does. Exodus 14:21 has Yahweh driving the sea back with a strong east wind, ruach, and it is the same word as the ruach hovering over the waters in Genesis 1:2.
So the deep gets pushed back by the same breath both times. Which makes the crossing read less like an escape route and more like a second creation, dry land coming up out of the water on the same terms as the first one. Exodus 15:8 keeps it running, by the ruach of your nostrils the waters piled up. Same chaos, same wind, same God, and Israel walks out onto ground that was not there a minute earlier.