John Calvin Commentary Exodus 14:28

"And the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, even all the host of Pharaoh that went in after them into the sea; there remained not so much as one of them." — Exodus 14:28 (ASV)

And the waters returned. In these two verses, Moses also continues his account. It plainly appears from Josephus and Eusebius what foolish stories Manetho¹⁵⁸ and others have invented about the Exodus of the people. Although Satan has attempted by their falsehoods to obscure the truth of sacred history, their accounts are so foolish and insignificant that they require no refutation. The very time they indicate sufficiently proves their ignorance.

But God has wonderfully provided for us by choosing His servant Moses, who was the instrument of their deliverance, to be also its witness and historian. This was, moreover, among those who had seen everything with their own eyes. In their characteristic stubbornness, they would never have allowed one who so severely reproved them to make any false statements of fact.

Therefore, since his authority is sure and unquestionable, let us only observe what his method was: namely, to briefly recount here how not one was left of Pharaoh’s mighty army. He records that the Israelites, every one of them, passed over in safety and dry-shod. He notes that, by the rod of Moses, the nature of the waters was changed, so that they stood like solid walls. Then, by the same rod, they were afterwards made liquid, so as to suddenly overwhelm the Egyptians.

This sequence of events plainly shows an extraordinary work of God occurred here. As for the insignificant arguments of certain secular writers¹⁵⁹ about the ebb and flow of the Arabian Gulf, their claims are self-evidently baseless. From these events, therefore, Moses at last rightly concludes that the Israelites had seen the powerful hand of God exerted at that time and place.

¹⁵⁸ Les ennemis de Dieu. — Fr..

¹⁵⁹ “Artapanus, an ancient heathen historian, informs us that this was what the more ignorant Menophites, who lived at a great distance, pretended, though he confesses that the more learned Heliopolitans, who lived much nearer, owned the destruction of the Egyptians and the deliverance of the Israelites to have been miraculous.” — Whiston’s Josephus, Notes on Jew. Ant., 2:16. “At an early period, historians (particularly in Egypt) hostile to the Jews, asserted that Moses, well acquainted with the tides of the Red Sea, took advantage of the ebb, and passed over his army, while the incautious Egyptians, attempting to follow, were surprised by the flood and perished. Yet, after every concession, it seems quite evident that, without one particular wind, the ebb-tide, even in the narrowest part of the channel, could not be kept back long enough to allow a number of people to cross in safety. We have thus the alternative of supposing that a man of the consummate prudence and sagacity, and the local knowledge attributed to Moses, altered, suspended, or at least did not hasten his march, and thus deliberately involved the people whom he had rescued at so much pains and risk, in the danger of being overtaken by the enemy, led back as slaves, or massacred, on the chance that an unusually strong wind would blow at a particular hour, for a given time, so as to keep back the flood, then die away, and allow the tide to return at the precise instant when the Egyptians were in the middle of the passage.” — , 2:16. “At an early period, historians (particularly in Egypt) hostile to the Jews, asserted that Moses, well acquainted with the tides of the Red Sea, took advantage of the ebb, and passed over his army, while the incautious Egyptians, attempting to follow, were surprised by the flood and perished. Yet, after every concession, it seems quite evident that, without one particular wind, the ebb-tide, even in the narrowest part of the channel, could not be kept back long enough to allow a number of people to cross in safety. We have thus the alternative of supposing that a man of the consummate prudence and sagacity, and the local knowledge attributed to Moses, altered, suspended, or at least did not hasten his march, and thus deliberately involved the people whom he had rescued at so much pains and risk, in the danger of being overtaken by the enemy, led back as slaves, or massacred, on the chance that an unusually strong wind would blow at a particular hour, for a given time, so as to keep back the flood, then die away, and allow the tide to return at the precise instant when the Egyptians were in the middle of the passage.” — Milman’s Hist. of the Jews, b. 2. Dr. Kitto says that, in those regions, the blowing of an easterly wind would be in itself a miracle., b. 2. Dr. Kitto says that, in those regions, the blowing of an easterly wind would be in itself a miracle.