Charles Ellicott Commentary Exodus 14:3

"And Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in." — Exodus 14:3 (ASV)

Entangled in the land. —Literally, confused, perplexed. (Compare to Esther 3:15.)

Pharaoh, seeing that the Israelites had placed the Bitter Lakes on their left and were marching southward, in a direction which would soon put the Red Sea on one side of them and a desert region—the area around Jebel Atakah—on the other, thought that they must be quite ignorant of the geography and have, as it were, “lost their way.”

He observed, moreover, that the wilderness had shut them in. The desert tract between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea lay on their left and in front of them: they would soon be unable to proceed and would not know which way to turn.