And it profited nothing to die by degrees: they go toward the one destruction which shall shut up all, the sea spreading open before them. The people, shut up in the place, trembles, and, terrified, awaits the end with the coming day, having contrived no weapons nor any turns of war, but with raised voice beseeching the prophets: 'O thrice and four times blessed are they whom Egypt bore off by death, for whom, even in the broad earth, she prepared an urn by the last lot for the dead! Worthy are they who cannot feel such great sorrows, nor see the slaughter of their offspring, nor their captured pledges. We are given as food to the birds, nor shall our bodies be laid, stored in the seat of a tomb, but in the vast desert.' Such words the men utter; all the multitude answered with mournings, and the throng rages about in kindled uproar. Then the holy leaders began to recount the promises, and to console the fear, and to wipe away the weepings with their words.
'We beseech you, lay aside from your mind these thankless fears; having experienced much, do not think that the things which the heavenly gifts promise by such great signs are to be despaired of. Can it ever slip from your faithless hearts, that Egypt, smitten with so many evils, and the ground which, sinking beneath the scourges, felt them — that you and all yours have lived safe amid the enemy in his afflicted realm? What need be said of things past? Surely you see how the guardianship of the mediating column takes care that we may have nothing to fear from a hostile fraud. Nay rather, lift up your minds, upraised with firm hope. For the last day is fixed for the nation tomorrow, which now, boasting of war, trusts in the arms it has taken up; the battle shall not so go, nor shall you meet weapons with weapons opposed, nor shall the triumph come to you by your own sweat this time;
it shall be fought by the wrath of heaven, whereby the battles shall be waged for you at God's peaceful nod.' Intent on such things, the prophets lifted up the downcast hearts of the men, calming their fear with holy voice. But a strong wind with burning blast scorched the deep, consuming the abyss all night long, while the Father, against nature, hurls thunderbolts at the waves, and the blast burns, and the wave seethes in the struck flood. Now the dreadful battle-line of dawn had scarcely reached the morning time, and the shining dawn was scattering the first blushes over the world, when at once all the Egyptians burst forth from their grim camp, and the roused youth roars on every side. But after the din came to the ears of the fearful people, and the terror of the blaring trumpet struck their breasts, they seize and take up the way, where the nearest shores of the sea, marked with red water, beckon them.
When the people came to the highest edges of the sea, at once the reverence of the water yielded, led by God, and opened up a way for those to whom the enemy had shut off the land. The engine which the scene of the hanging water had built had suspended the bridled waters in the lofty air. The chosen nation of God, fleeing and outstripping its pursuers, advances through the midst, fixing its footprints on the earth in the region of the sea; the rocks of the deep are trodden, and the running track grinds the bare ooze. The scorching sun inserts its gaze into the parted waves, and touched the never-seen earth with a new light; and the longer ray strove to descend so great a space, and scarcely brought its wearied radiance to the depths. The Egyptian tyrant at first believed that the Hebrews were shut out, and, repulsed by the flood and turned to flight, were giving their backs.
He bids the columns hasten with such a word: 'Behold, the fugitive nation, shirking the impending war, again deserts the field, and, trusting in the help of its feet, retreats; do you only press them with arms, and press upon them, now shut in; the sea will do the rest.' Scarcely had he spoken these things when they leap forward, and rush in their course to reach the shore. When they came, they see the basins of the drying deep offer an unaccustomed way, and, the recess laid open, they see, as it were, the trembling waves fled before the pious Hebrews treading them; they see these too descend safe by the dry path, secure of the sea and of themselves, fearing not arms, nor the very sea that suffers restraint for the harm of the wicked. The column halted for a little, with restrained motions, and the drawn bridles held the horses in check.
And someone, to whose heart a changed spark was then giving even a slight warmth, perchance spoke thus: 'What God twists the world from its ancient hinge with a new law, and changes its turns, and troubles what is established? For if nature is preserved in created things, what is the cause of this portent-bearing way? What, in short, remains — if the sea is crossed on foot — but that the fields be furrowed with ships, and the heaven run down from its pole, that the infernal regions rise up to those above, that the burning zone of the sky grow cold, that Scorpio set fire to the wind-chilled Bear? Unless the trusted order of things has been overturned by these signs, let no one, with me as guide, descend into the savage sea; let the path that leads the enemy be suspect to me. For if the deity willed equal wars, he would have shut in the fugitive column with a barrier.'
'Now let them depart, and let their own portents alone follow the wanderers. Nor do I fully grasp that the now-dry sea, which the deep encircles on high, does not hide its perils in the bared bottom.' A burning uproar with sedition receives these words, and the hidden sentence of impending death presses upon them. The renowned people had crossed the watery valley on foot, and, leaving the arched rollings of the emptied gulf, was after the abyss climbing up to the upper lands by the shore. The leader of the black column is carried forward, and wrath comes upon Pharaoh, called by his own name Cenchres. They alike seize the hollows of the opened sea, and invade the way. What would mad fury not dare? On this side a part of the cavalry drives the column, on that side another bids the swift four-horse chariots go with quickened goads over the fields of the seabed.
When the gnashing cavalry came into the midst of the sea, and the men's burning wrath complains of the delays of so wide a gulf, the other side trembles in the narrowed world. Then, through the lofty column with its shining cloud, a voice sent from heaven thunders, and the interpreter of the heavenly word, addressing holy Moses by name, comes and says: 'The time has come in which my commands are to be proved; now there shall be an end for Egypt, now the sentence, storming, shall punish with a final calamity the mind chastised by so many turns; let the sword succeed the scourges. Do you only now strike the parted wave with your rod, and let the waters, brought back, resume their own countenances.' He, his knee fixed at the edges of the laid-open margin, and at the shore from which the wave is absent, being bidden, soon strikes, entrusting the mysteries to the notable wood.
Hence a sudden crash begins to resound, the rushing water thunders on every side around, and the wave first closes there, where the last fate was showing the way to the Egyptian king. After the way is shut, and the flood repels the one going forward, he now repents of the gulf he has entered, and in flight attempts a late return: the trembling cohorts give their backs, and cast away their arms; the sea presses on the fugitives, and, following, meets them from in front; the wall of the down-rushing water, cast round about on every side, collapses with loosened reins. That king, ever fierce, now tamed under death itself, says: 'This victory does not yield to human wars; we are overcome, and are overthrown by heaven as our enemy. Flee, each who can, and, being vanquished, escape, O attendant, nor now hurl weapons against God with vain attempts.'
O if only human pride would consent to change hearts pricked with compunction before death! What use, in the end, is it to have set an end to evils only when the boundary presses hard, when the span of this present life is cut off by its age? 'Confess,' says Scripture, 'while whole and strong'; for if anyone comes to lay aside sin only when he can no longer sin, he is let go by his very excess. And so the host, soon to be drowned, hangs suspended, lifted upon the towering waves: raised upon a mountain of waters, it is pressed down by the weight of its weapons, and the dying bodies carry back to the clinging bottom the iron with which they were clad. When one part, its limbs first freed of arms, entwines the swimmers in wretched embraces, it perishes, deceived by the very help it sought; and those who cling together sink alike beneath an eternal burden, and, bound fast, are slain.
But others, while long they toss their wearied arms, rush upon swords and cling to the floating spears, and the sea, all of one hue, is mingled with red blood. Nay, even the conspicuous prince of the Memphite court, driving his gleaming steeds with a black charioteer, a spectator of his own destruction and the last survivor of his people, is shipwrecked in his chariot amid the waves he had entered. The battle rests while the sea does the fighting, and Israel conquers at peace, accomplishing the contest by sight alone. Then the filled valley perishes, and, the flood turned back, the level surface of the smoothed abyss is drawn out extended. Then over all the shore foul corpses are cast, and the sea displayed its triumph upon the fields.
The renowned leader describes in solemn song that excellent deed, which is chanted throughout all the world: when guilt, purged by the sacred streams, is blotted out, and the water of the childbearing font sends forth new offspring, after the ancient guilts which Eve brought forth. From this it took its discourse, the poem being first set forth, while the slender page unfolds the mournful falls of man. If anything sad there was, spoken in poor verse, may this memorable wave of the sacred triumph wipe it away — wherein joys resound, wherein every sin is taken away through the laver, and the new man lives while the old torpor dies.
Wherein good things arise, wherein harmful deeds are slain, wherein the true Israel is washed in the sacred waves, wherein the exulting, leaping throng resounds a harmonious trophy, wherein the gifts of the foreshadowing figure are fulfilled — which the holy prophet set forth through five volumes; and we with our reed-pipe follow the trumpet, and keeping the measure we now bring our slender skiff to harbor on this shore.