John Calvin 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)

For Pharaoh will say. God here explains His design to Moses. Although He had so often gained glorious victories in His engagements with Pharaoh, the last act still remained: to overwhelm him and his army in the sea. He says that Pharaoh, then, will be caught in His snare, so as to rush to his own destruction.

For if the people had gone into the land of Canaan by a direct route, they could not have been so easily pursued. Therefore God, for the sake of magnifying His glory, set a bait to catch the tyrant, just as fish are hooked.

The word used here, נבכים,¹⁵² nebukim, some translate as “perplexed,” others as “entangled.” However, it may be well explained that they were to be “confounded in the land” because they would find no way out, being hemmed in on all sides in the narrow passage, with the sea behind them.

And when He speaks of Pharaoh’s intentions, He does not, as humans do, merely guess at a probability. Instead, He declares the secret mind of the tyrant, as something He knew well, since it is His attribute to discern our hearts.

Afterwards, He goes still further, for He signifies not only that He foresaw what would happen, but He again repeats what we have so often observed before: that He would harden Pharaoh’s heart so that he would pursue the people. From this it follows that all this was directed by His will and guidance.

But He did not communicate this to Moses only in private; He intended for all of them to be warned beforehand, so that they would not despair of safety when terrified by the sudden assault of their enemies. However, this warning was not as helpful to them as it should have been, because, being soon after surprised, they were no less alarmed than if they had been brought into danger through God’s error and Moses’s ignorance.

¹⁵² נבכים. Calvin adopts the explanation given by S. M., on the authority of Aben-Ezra, “Passivum est a verbo בוך, quod significat animo perplexum esse, ut nescias quo te vertas.” — W.