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locality. Israel must have turned eastward or north-east, and come to the verge of the
wilderness. This was of course the nearer way to Palestine. A few more marches and
they would have been involved in war with the Philistines. To avoid this (Exod. 13: 17,
18) God led them about, through the wilderness of the Red Sea. Pharaoh misread this
apparent change in the direction of the host and concluded, to his own destruction, that
they had become "entangled" in the land, and that the wilderness had "shut them in"
(Exod. 14: 3).
A certain amount of difficulty in following the journey of Israel to Sinai was
experienced by investigators, so long as it was believed that the crossing of the Red Sea
took place somewhere about Suez. The discovery of Pithom, Rameses and Succoth,
revealed the impossibility of Suez being the site of the crossing, and the discovery that
the "bitter lakes" were originally part of the Red Sea which in the course of centuries has
receded to its present position, practically fixes the site of the crossing.
The reader will not expect from us a geographical survey, but we must give some
proof for the statement concerning the Red Sea. Naville found evidences at Pithom that
the "Red Sea extended much farther north than it does now". The Greek name for this
city, as we have said, is Heroopolis, and a Latin inscription bearing the name Ero Castra
was found on the site. Both Greek and Latin authors state that this city was built at the
head of the Arabian Gulf. Artemidos, states that ships sailed from Heroopolis. Ptolemy
said that the head of the Heroopolitan gulf was one-sixth of a degree south of the city.
About twelve or fifteen feet above the present sea level, there are, near the bitter lakes,
layers of salt, and Sir J. W. Dawson says:
"We have indisputable evidence in the marine beds with Red Sea shells extending
towards the Bitter Lakes . . . . . these shells are of recent Red Sea species."
These evidences by reliable investigators are sufficient proof for our assertion that the
Red Sea penetrated further north than it does to-day.
Close to Pithom there was a city called Pi-ker-chat, apparently the Pi-hahiroth* of
Exod. 14: 2. Following the narrative of the Exodus, we come to the next stage in their
journey.
[* - The reader who knows the Hebrew alphabet will not be disturbed by the gutturals
that are found in the Egyptian, but absent from the English spelling. Nearly all vowels
and aspirates in Hebrew require heavier breathings than we are accustomed to use.]
Somewhere near Pi-hahiroth and over against Baal-zephon the Israelites crossed the
Red Sea, or as it is in the original Yam Suph "The Sea of Reeds". Their itinerary is
resumed in Exod. 15: 22:
"So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of
Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. And when they
came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter"
(Exod. 15: 22, 23).
In the record of Numbers there is a slight difference: