Good Morning.
Now the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: “Speak to the children of Israel, that they turn and camp before Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, opposite Baal Zephon; you shall camp before it by the sea. For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, ‘They are bewildered by the land; the wilderness has closed them in.'” (Exodus 14:1-3)
A fascinating thing happened while they were on the way to Mount Sinai — God instructed them to take a detour. We should keep in mind that Moses knew that he was to lead the people to Sinai and he knew how to get there — he had already made the journey and back again. The point is that his intended route would not have included a sea crossing and so we are to conclude that God told them to travel a path that no one expected to take, perhaps including Moses.
The place the Bible says that Israel was to camp, called Pi Hahiroth, literally means “mouth of the gorges.” To get to a place described as being the “mouth” of a gorge implies that they had to travel through the gorge in order to get to the mouth. The Bible seems to verify this because the mouth of the gorge placed them next to the sea. Most likely, God directed this massive group of people to make a detour and travel through a dry river bed — known as wadis in that part of the world — on their way to the sea.
In effect, God led them into a place where they could not turn to the left or to the right; they had to continue moving forward. With each step they took toward the sea, the more precarious their position became if one looked at it from a temporal point of view. That is, in fact, how Pharaoh saw it saying, “They are entangled in the land.” On the surface, it seemed that God had led them into a death trap; in reality He was leading them down the one and only path that led to life and deliverance from their adversary.
There are times in our lives when we feel just as the children of Israel must have felt — concerned, uncertain and maybe a bit doubtful. At times, God directs us in such a way that our faith is stretched beyond what we are comfortable with. We feel as if we are being squeezed by our circumstances and we don’t know where we’re going. Worse than that, we can hear Pharaoh’s chariots in hot pursuit just giddy at the prospect of destroying us.
If we find ourselves in this circumstance then we must trust that, rather than leading us into a death trap, He is taking us down the road that leads to victory and deliverance. It might not seem that way at first — and we will certainly have to trust Him more than ever before — but our Father knows what He is doing. Let Him have His way and do the work in us so that, once we have traversed the sea bed and come up on the other side, the enemy that has long plagued us, we will see no more.
Blessings and Shalom,
Bill
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