THE JOURNEY OF THE ISRAELITES may, for convenience of reference, be divided intofour stages. 1. Rameses lo the Red Sea.—This stage has already been described fu the article Exorms. A few of the leading points, however, must here be stated. Rameses is mentioned as the place front which the Israelites set out : And they departed from Rameses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month ; on the morrow aftef the passover the children of Israel went out wall. an hig,rh hand in the sight of all the Egyptians . . And the children of Israel removed from Rameses and pitched in Succoth' (Num. xxxiii. 3, 5). It must not be supposed, however, that the whole body of the Israelites, men, women, and children, with their flocks, herds, and movables, had been gathered to that one spot, and there ar ranged in compact order. The people had been long preparing for the journey. A system of com munication was established by which Moses could convey his orders with great rapidity to every part of the country in which they resided. The flocks and herds were doubtless away on the open plain towards the eastern frontier of Goshen. Most of the people being shepherds, were necessarily semi nomads, and had their wives and children with their flocks. Moses and the leading men of the nation, with most of those probably who had been engaged in labour by Eg,yptian taskmasters, had assembled at Rameses ; and they marched out in order. It must strike the thoughtful reader as most remarkable that all the people were able to set out on such a journey on short notice. Sceptics and infidels have objected to the historic truth of the narrative on this ground Bishop Colenso puts the objection in its most plausible form. The people, he says, amounted to two millions. These were required to start at a moment's notice. The order was conveyed to them all ; the passover was observed ; property to an immense amount was borrowed ; the flocks and herds were collected ; the sick and infirm, women in child-birth and young infants, brought in from a wide extent of country, and congregated at Rameses. He concludes— I do not hesitate to declare this statement to be utterly incredible and impossible' (Pent. Pt. i. pp. 61-65). It would be incredible were the facts as the bishop represents them. But they are not so. It would seem from a carefttl study of the whole narrative, that the flocks, herds, and mixed multi tude,' did not follow the same line of route as the chief men. They are not mentioned at the passage of the Dead Sea, nor at Marah, nor at Elim. They appear to have taken a more northerly course, passing round the head of the gulf and through the best pastures. This is the plan always adopted by Bedawin on the march. The chiefs and main body of men keep together, while the flocks and their attendants roam far and wide. Yet when an
Arab writer gives an account of the migrations of his tribe, he confines the narrative wholly to the central group.
It will be observed also that Colenso utterly ignores any divine element in the Exodus. He judges of it as a simple case of migration, in direct opposition to what is affirmed by the sacred his torian repeatedly and emphatically. The power of the Lord was directly exercised in every stage of the Exodus (Exod. :di. 23, 36, 42, 51 ; xiii. 14.18, seg.) We know not how far the direct exercise of divine power extended—how it strengthened the weak, healed the sick, or directed the movements of the whole multitude. We do know, however, ' that it was exercised. Without it the Exodus I would have been impossible.
The stations and encampments mentioned in the sacred record were those of the manhalled men under the command of Moses. The number of this marshalled body cannot be ascertained. If we take modern Arab tribes as a guide, it probably did not amount to more than one-tenth of the whole! The site of Rameses is disputed. If, as seems most probable, it lay between the bitter lakes, on the eastern border of the Delta [RamEsEs], then the line of march must have been south-east, pamllel to the ancient canal (Robinson, B. R. i. 54). The distance to the head of the gulf would thus be about thirty-five miles. If, however, Rameses lay near Cairo, the natural route for the people would be along the line of the railway to Suez (Beamont, Cairo to Sinai, pp. 16-21). The former theory accords best with the sacred narra tive. It must not be forgotten that the Israelites from first to last were under divine guidance. At first they appear to have marched ` by the way of the wilderness' to the head of the gulf ; but on reaching Etham, in the edge of the wilderness' (Exod. xiii. 20 ; Num. xxxiii. 6), they turned aside. There the presence of the Lord as their leader, in a pillar of cloud,' is first mentioned, and there 'the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they turn (literally return,' 1=11, brourpOavrcs) and encamp before Pi hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over against Baal-Zephon' (Exod. xiv. 2). In the parallel pas sage in Numbers (xxxiii. 7) it is said, ` They removed from Etham and turned again unto Pi-hahiroth.' There was here a complete change in their route by divine command, for the purpose of entrapping the Egyptians, who, it seems, were watching their movements. At first they directed their course to the head of the gulf, as if about to pass by it into the wilderness ; but at Etham they turned sharply to the right down the western shore. Pharaoh now thought they were completely in his power, and so, humanly speaking, they were ; but God opened a passage for them through the sca.