1. And the Lord spoke unto Moses. God, by closing up all the ways by which the Israelites might have escaped, now opens a course for His wonderful power, and by bringing them for one moment to despair, provided for the safety of His Church through a long period of time. This final act, then, marvelously illustrated the grace of God, so that the people, however ungrateful and disaffected they might be, should still acknowledge God as their deliverer; besides, its consequence was, that the forces of Egypt not only being broken, but the whole nation being destroyed, or, at least, the flower of it extinguished, it brought no further trouble upon the people until they were established in the land of Canaan. If they had freely and peacefully gone forth, with the king and the people of Egypt quiet, the former miracles would not have sufficiently availed to testify their redemption; but when, being everywhere shut in, they see nothing but death before them, whilst the sea suddenly and unexpectedly affords them a passage, and overwhelms their enemies pressing on them from behind, they are obliged to confess that they were not only saved from death but from the deepest abysses by the hand of God. But it appears that, when they were commanded by Moses to cast themselves, and, as it were, to ingulf themselves in the narrow passage, of which mention is made, they were astonished by the miracles, and like them that dream, since they obeyed without hesitation, although the very aspect of the place must have inspired them with horror. For, if they had apprehended danger, their readiness to obey would not have been so great, as we shall presently see. Wherefore it was the intention of Moses not so much to praise them, as the providence of God. For it is plain, that unless they had been amazed by the miracles, of which they had seen so many, they scarcely could have been induced willingly to throw themselves into. defiles from whence there was no retreat. From the word מגדל, migdol, we may conjecture that a fortress was built on the rock to prevent access to it. I do not quite understand the meaning of החירת (151) hachiroth, nor do I see why the Greeks should have translated it “the mouth of the valley;” yet from the word signifying “a mouth,” it may be probably conjectured that it was contracted by piles. Because the word חור, chor, signifies a cave or hole, I know not whether the place might not have obtained its name, as the mouth of the holes or caverns; for the letter ו, vau, is often converted into י, yod, and the change of the gender in the plural number is frequent with the Hebrews. Or perhaps some may think it more likely, that though it was written החירות, hachiroth, the letter ח crept in in place of ה from its similarity. If we so take it, the feminine gender is put for the masculine, and it will be “the mouth of the mountains.” But although we may be ignorant of the etymology of the second word, the word “mouth” makes it certain that the defile was inclosed by rocks, and of narrow access. Although, if I may tender my own judgment in a doubtful matter, I rather consider that it is derived from the word חרת charath, which means to engrave, or to furrow, because the rocks were cut as by a mallet. But on the opposite side, the place was surrounded by the sea, as though the Israelites had been cast into a sepulcher.
(151) פיהחירת C. has not borrowed anything from S.M. here. In Dr. Wilson’s “Lands of the Bible,” vol. 1, chap. 5, he has observed that if Pi-hahiroth is to be supposed to be a name given to the place, in the Hebrew tongue, it is well fitted to describe the mouth of the defiles, on emerging from which, the traveler comes in sight of the Red Sea, and enters on ground shut in between mountain barriers and that sea; but he also mentions that Gesenius has said, on the authority of Tablonski, that these syllables form the Egyptian name for a place where sedges grow. — W.