Joshua 24:7 ‘But when they cried out to the LORD, He put darkness between you and the Egyptians, and brought the sea upon them and covered them; and your own eyes saw what I did in Egypt. And you lived in the wilderness for a long time.
Did the LORD part the Red Sea or the Reed Sea? Was it what we call the Red Sea, part of the modern day Suez Canal passage from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arabian Sea? Or was it the relatively shallow marshy area at the north end of the Gulf of Suez that was filled with Reeds?
The identity of this particular crossing place is often thrown up in the face of those who believe the Scriptures. Those people, wanting to show that the Bible is just a story book for kids, say it was the swamp area, that no miracle happened, just an unusually dry day. No water parted. No visible sign of the LORD’s presence was present.
But one thing these people miss, and that one thing is mentioned in our text for today. Joshua in summarizing the LORD’s delivering activities in the history of Israel recalls this event. The identity of the sea in question isn’t even mentioned. It wasn’t important to the account. What was included was the important fact.
The important thing is that the water, no matter the location or the type drown the Egyptian army. The water was “upon them and covered them.” If it was a marsh, then the miracle is that an army of elite military men could be overcome by a foot of water! That is a miracle, perhaps greater than the traditional view of this event.
But why does Joshua include this event in such a shortened form? The boiled down details reinforce one thing to his audience. That one thing is that with the LORD they have victory. Without the LORD, they will be defeated. So, stay true to the LORD.
We often don’t like to live in a world that is so black and white, so right and wrong, so non-gray area. We like our wiggle room, our ability to fudge the details. We don’t like other people to nail us down.
But Joshua knows that there is one thing that must happen for Israel to survive and continue in the blessing of the LORD. They must abandon forever the foreign gods. They must become faithful to the LORD in all they say and do. They must trust him alone.
They have failed so far, and we know from the rest of Scripture that they continued to fail. And then there was the Cross! The victory had arrived. Death was defeated. The way was opened for us to walk through on dry ground into a relationship with the Creator of the Universe.
The Arnold Journey 