It’s one of the classic scenes in American cinema, from Cecil B. DeMille’s blockbuster, The Ten Commandments. A young Charlton Heston playing Moses, standing upon the rock overlooking the seas, lifting his staff, declaring, “Behold, his mighty hand!” as the orchestra brass blares around him and the waters begin to churn and then part before him like a coat being unzipped, forming two enormous walls on either side as Israelites and Egyptians alike look on in awe and wonder.
I.
Now, compared with all the CGI magic of movies today these 70-year old special effects can look a little hokey, but they were pretty impressive for 1956, and effective! More than just entertaining moviegoers, this scene from The Ten Commandments has defined our modern imagination of how this critical moment in the Exodus and the story of God’s people transpired: an epic scene with Moses calling down the terrifying power of God, who moves decisively on a cosmic scale to deliver the people.
And yet, in hearing this story read earlier you may have noticed that’s not exactly the story scripture hands down to us. God delivers the people: that much is clear. But the details are a little fuzzy, and the whole story is much more drawn out than our DeMille-shaped imaginations remember it.
For instance, the movie depicts this parting of the waters happening in a flash at Moses’ command—and in our own cinematic imaginations this is likely how we envision it. But Exodus says after Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, “The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided.” This makes it sound like it happened over the course of a night, almost like a tide. Later, it says that “at dawn” the waters went back to the normal depth. And yet it still describes these “walls” of water, so something is going on here.
In the same way, certain verses make it seem as if the Egyptians were swallowed up in the sea as the walls of water collapsed upon them. But other places describe their chariots getting stuck in the mud as the Israelites escaped on foot. And this isn’t revisionist history we’re doing here. Pointing out these idiosyncrasies in the text is not a modern innovation. Jewish interpreters of this story have recognized these odd ticks for generations, and have wondered what they might tell us about this central story of God’s deliverance, and perhaps even more importantly, what they might tell us about the ways God acts in our own lives.
II.
As is often the case in Jewish biblical interpretation, the midrash on this story, the commentary tradition developed through the generations, wonders how things looked a little closer to the ground, so to speak. It’s a terrifying scene the closer you get to it. The mobs of people,—men, women, children, families—all runaway slaves having escaped their masters whose armies are now pursuing them. They’re exhausted, hungry, barely holding it together. Babies are crying and their mothers are consoling them to distract themselves from their own terror. Their running has led them to what seems to be a dead end—the sea is there in front of them and they can hear the drums of war beating behind them, fast approaching.
In their commentary, the rabbis lift up the desperation of this scene, how the people’s backs were against the wall—or really the water. They wonder how it felt, how it happened, that the people took those fateful steps into the sea. One tradition points to the verse after we’re told Moses stretches out his hand and God drives the waters back, where it says, literally, “The Israelites went into the midst of sea on dry land”—which is an odd way of phrasing that, even in Hebrew. And the rabbis asked, Well, which is it? Did they enter “in the midst of the sea” or “on dry land?” And one answer they gave tries to have both be true. They wondered if the waters didn’t split for the people “until they came right up into it, right up to their noses—only then, did it become dry land.”
In this telling, the miracle happened only when the people, in their desperation, all other options having been exhausted, finally hand themselves and the futures over to God.[1] Which suggests that dry land may appear before us, or underneath our feet, only after we’ve taken the risk of wading out into the midst of the sea as far as we can go by ourselves.
It’s one of the great mysteries of faith, how it’s often not until we’re out of choices or ideas, having exhausted our own resources and what we alone could muster—only then do we summon the courage, or simply in our exhaustion relent, and wade out into the waters. And to our great surprise, we make it through. Somehow the chaos recedes and a new way appears; a way we didn’t see before, a way that quite possibly wasn’t there before—a way that, if you asked us to describe just how it happened we might not be able to. We just know that we made it through; that there must have been dry land there, where before there had not.
It’s interesting, too, this contrast of watery chaos and “dry land” is a kind of echo back to the opening verses of Genesis when God parted the waters and revealed dry land for the first time. What’s imagined, or perhaps reimagined here, is nothing short of a new creation. A rebirth. For something new to be born, or revealed, or uncovered requires a measure of risk, which is to say, a measure of trust. It requires handing ourselves over to the unknown. A treatment plan, or reaching the end of one. A career change—maybe one you never wanted, or even one you did. A stepping out. A coming out. A proposal extended. Bringing the baby home. It’s why the words we say over the waters during a baptism speak of being buried and rising again—there is some risk involved in any end that becomes a beginning.
It would be much easier if the waters would just part before us while we’re still there on the shore, but how often is it that we must wade out into them—even up to our noses, it seems—for dry land to appear?
III.
Another tradition remembers this all differently. Some of the old rabbis insisted it wasn’t the entire people who summoned the courage to walk out into the waters, waiting for them to part, but one person who went first and showed it could be done. One rabbi said that each tribe was unwilling to be the first to enter the sea, and so they were all standing there looking at each other, each one saying, “We’re not going first,” debating and arguing and “offering advice to each other,” it says, waiting for someone to take that faith-filled step.
As this tradition has it, the people couldn’t find it within them to take that next step, when one from the tribe of Judah sprang forth, a young man named Nachshon the son of Amminadev, to whom scripture only gives a passing glance. But this tradition says it was Nachshon who, seeing the fear on his neighbor’s faces and the hesitation of his people to do the hard thing that had to be done, made the decision right then and there to go down to the shore and take those first steps into the waters which had yet to part. It was Nachshon who kept walking as the waters reached his ankles and then knees and waist and finally his nostrils, when the waters finally parted around him, and only then did the whole company of the Israelites follow him on the dry land that had been revealed before them.[2]
And in one sense, isn’t this so often how a people move forward: through the courage of one who’s willing to take the risk of being the first into the water? In some cases history eventually comes around and remembers them as trailblazers or heroes, but in the moment it’s often much different. I think of Martin Luther King, Jr. who of course today is revered as a Civil Rights icon but the summer he was assassinated had a 75% disapproval rating—too much talk about the Vietnam War and economic disparity. 75% disapproval! I think of all the many “firsts” who stepped out to make the world a little safer or a little better for the rest of us, often at great risk to themselves. It often takes the courage of the one to let the many know what’s possible.
But in another sense, if we think about this internally and our own decision making process, isn’t this how we as individuals open ourselves to change? Against all the many voices in our head that find any excuse available to avoid taking that first step, we somehow find ourselves able to summon down that one voice that pushes us forward into the water?
DeMille’s movie is a masterpiece of cinema, but when held against the drama of scripture and our own lives, it falls short. There are certainly times when we might wish God to move in our lives and in the world in decisive, unmistakable ways. But more often the parting of waters is more subtle.
An unexpected calm when the world is crashing in. A “lump in the throat” that tells us we are on the threshold of something important. A quiet practice of prayer or meditation that through time shapes us into new people, like water slowly hitting against a rock. A slow warming of the heart. A relationship that presents us with new ways of knowing. A small something that leads to one step, and then another, and then another.
It doesn’t even feel like an act of God in the moment, but when we make it to the other side and look back over our shoulder to see the distance we have come, we realize that what has happened was nothing short of a miracle. We were saved and we didn’t even know it. And even more, we had a part to play in it. This is a part of the story we cannot overlook: the people would not have made it to the other side had they’d not made those first, hard steps.
IV.
And it also happens that these small steps have a way of reverberating out into the world in ways we’re not always aware. If you go to the opening chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, where it lists the genealogy of Jesus, there among the names you know well—Abraham, Isaac, Judah, David, even Ruth and Rehab and the wife of Uriah—you’ll find a name that the rest of scripture has passed over. Nachshon son of Aminnadev; the one tradition says took those first steps out into the waters to reveal the way of God through the midst of the sea.
This is how God moves in the world: through us. Through our courage, through our stumbling in the dark. Through our feet wading out into the waters, one small step at a time.
Even up to our noses.
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[1] Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus. p.215
2 Multiple traditions surround Nachshon, may of which are noted here: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/52970?lang=bi