One Is, That They Traversed Only The Very
Small Creek At The Northern Extremity Of The Inlet, And That They
Entered The Bed Of The Water At The Spot On Which Suez Now Stands;
The Other, That They Crossed The Sea From A Point Eighteen Miles
Down The Coast.
The Oxford theologians, who, with Milman their
professor, {38} believe that Jehovah conducted His chosen people
without disturbing the order of nature, adopt the first view, and
suppose that the Israelites passed during an ebb-tide, aided by a
violent wind.
One among many objections to this supposition is,
that the time of a single ebb would not have been sufficient for
the passage of that vast multitude of men and beasts, or even for a
small fraction of it. Moreover, the creek to the north of this
point can be compassed in an hour, and in two hours you can make
the circuit of the salt marsh over which the sea may have extended
in former times. If, therefore, the Israelites crossed so high up
as Suez, the Egyptians, unless infatuated by Divine interference,
might easily have recovered their stolen goods from the encumbered
fugitives by making a slight detour. The opinion which fixes the
point of passage at eighteen miles' distance, and from thence right
across the ocean depths to the eastern side of the sea, is
supported by the unanimous tradition of the people, whether
Christians or Mussulmans, and is consistent with Holy Writ: "the
waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, AND ON THEIR
LEFT." The Cambridge mathematicians seem to think that the
Israelites were enabled to pass over dry land by adopting a route
not usually subjected to the influx of the sea. This notion is
plausible in a merely hydrostatical point of view, and is supposed
to have been adopted by most of the Fellows of Trinity, but
certainly not by Thorp, who is one of the most amiable of their
number. It is difficult to reconcile this theory with the account
given in Exodus, unless we can suppose that the words "sea" and
"waters" are there used in a sense implying dry land.
Napoleon when at Suez made an attempt to follow the supposed steps
of Moses by passing the creek at this point, but it seems,
according to the testimony of the people at Suez, that he and his
horsemen managed the matter in a way more resembling the failure of
the Egyptians than the success of the Israelites. According to the
French account, Napoleon got out of the difficulty by that warrior-
like presence of mind which served him so well when the fate of
nations depended on the decision of a moment - he ordered his
horsemen to disperse in all directions, in order to multiply the
chances of finding shallow water, and was thus enabled to discover
a line by which he and his people were extricated. The story told
by the people of Suez is very different:
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 132 of 170
Words from 69396 to 69895
of 89094
