What a terrible and critical situation the people of God faced at this solemn moment! The enemy seeking to recover possession of his prey, pursuing hard after Israel and driving them to an extremity towards an impassable sea. It is the same with sinners. The power of Satan hurries them on towards death, and death is the judgment of God: “It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27). Now the soul must have to do with the latter, directly and personally, must come into immediate contact with death, which is its expression. There is no means of escaping. The people were weaponless and without resource in presence of the enemy and the power of death. It is in this extremity that God intervenes. The rod of judicial authority is stretched out, not over Israel, but in their favor, over the sea, and death becomes, instead of a gulf, a pathway for the people. They can cross it dry-shod. What a new pathway it was, and what a solemn hour for Israel as a nation, when they passed between these liquid walls formed on their right hand and on their left, which instead of engulfing them proved their rampart! The solemnity of the scene remained; the horror of it was forever obliterated.

We find in this scene a type of death and judgment borne by another. The Lord offered Himself for us: “You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me; all Your billows and Your waves passed over me … The waters surround me, even to my soul” (Jon. 2:3, 5). Christ endured to the full the horror of death, and felt it alone in the infinite depths of His holy soul. But the people cross the sea dry-shod. Judgment finds nothing in them because it has spent itself in death on the person of Christ—for them and for us.