The Splitting of the Sea of Reeds

A few days after the departure Pharaoh regretted his decision and pursued the fugitives with six hundred picked chariots. Israel was trapped: sea ahead, army behind, desert on either side. The people cried out—and, as the Torah honestly records, not only to God but against Moses: were there no graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness? The answer was unexpected: why do you cry to Me—tell the children of Israel to go forward. Moses stretched out his hand, a strong east wind blew all night, the water divided, and the people crossed on dry ground between walls of water. The Egyptians followed; by morning the sea returned and the army was lost. Then Moses and Israel sang the Song of the Sea, the oldest hymn in the Bible. Miriam took a timbrel and all the women went out after her with drums and dancing—they had packed the instruments in Egypt, certain there would be something to celebrate.

Here the chronologies differ not by years but by a century. Seder Olam Rabbah places the Exodus in 1313 BCE. The prevailing academic date is the thirteenth century, the time of Ramesses II: its firm anchor is the stele of Pharaoh Merneptah of 1208 BCE, the first mention of Israel outside the Tanakh, where Israel is already in Canaan. A minority of scholars holds to the fifteenth century, reckoning by the plain count of I Kings 6:1 — four hundred and eighty years from the Exodus to Solomon's Temple. The timeline shows the prevailing dating.