Pharaoh Is Defeated!

Exodus, Chapters 7 -14

Moses and Aaron went many times to Pharaoh to ask him to let the people go. Pharaoh would not! God sent many strange and terrible plagues upon him and his people to punish them for their wickedness, and make them obey Him.

Pharaoh had commanded that all the sons of the Hebrews would be killed. God in one night destroyed all the first-born in Egypt. Fearing for their own lives, the Egyptians hastily drove out the Israelites, men, women, children, and cattle.

There were six hundred thousand men, not counting women and children. God caused a pillar of cloud to go before them in the daytime, to show them the way they were to take, and at night He led them by a pillar of fire.

When the children of Israel had left Egypt, Pharaoh, though his kingdom had been nearly destroyed for his disobedience to God, was angry with himself for having let them go. So he gathered together a great army, and pursued them to where they were encamped, in the wilderness by the Red Sea.

The Israelites saw they were being pursued and were very afraid. The once again blamed Moses for bringing them there because they thought it would have been better to be slaves in Egypt, than to be killed in the wilderness. Moses told them not to be afraid, God would deliver them.

The pillar of cloud and of fire, that had gone before to guide them moved and went behind the camp, so that it stood between the Egyptians and the children of Israel. To the Egyptians it was cloudy and dark, they could not continue their pursuit, but to the Israelites it gave light.

Moses, as God had commanded him, stretched out his rod over the sea and the waters divided, standing like a wall on the right and on the left, leaving dry land between them, so that the Israelites could pass through the very middle of the sea to the opposite shore. The Egyptians, seeing this, hastened to follow but God sent a violent storm, which threw them all into confusion.

When they were in the middle of the sea, where the Israelites had gone safely, God made Moses again stretch out his hand over it. When he did so, the waters came back again to their place, and drowned and all the Egyptians, there was not one of them left alive.


So God delivered the children of Israel, as He had said.