Exodus14chapter 14

Rashi sets this chapter on the calendar of the feast. He counts the days from the going out, and puts Israel in the sea on the night of the seventh day, with the Song sung the following morning. That, he says, is the seventh day of Passover, "and that is why we read The Song as the Scriptural lesson on the seventh day of the Festival" (Rashi on Exodus 14:5:1). He cites the tractate Megillah for it. A Christian reader meets the crossing as a story. A Jewish congregation meets it as a day in the week of the feast, with this chapter and the next read aloud on it.

Rashi reads the turning back of verse 2 as a trap laid for Pharaoh, so that he would think Israel lost (Rashi on Exodus 14:2:1). At verse 8 he treats the hardening as the settling of a doubt. Pharaoh was in two minds whether to pursue, "and He hardened his heart to pursue" (Rashi on Exodus 14:8:1). At verse 15 he carries two readings of the answer given to Moses. In the first, Moses was standing in prayer, and was told that this was no time to pray at length while Israel stood in trouble. In the second, the words mean that the matter rests on God rather than on Moses (Rashi on Exodus 14:15:1). At verse 19 he reads the divine name used there as the name of judgment, and holds that Israel itself stood under judgment at that hour (Rashi on Exodus 14:19:1). At verse 20 he gives the parable of a father who moves his son in front of him or behind him as the danger shifts. At last the father carries the boy on his arm (Rashi on Exodus 14:20:1). The text is the Rosenbaum and Silbermann Rashi of 1929 to 1934, in the public domain.

The rabbis take up the chariots of verse 7 at Arakhin 15a:17 and Eikhah Rabbah 3:1. On Israel crying out at the sea they taught in Bamidbar Rabbah 8:3, and on the complaint of verses 11 and 12 at Arakhin 15a:15. On the east wind they taught in Bereshit Rabbah 55:8. The Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai carries this chapter at eleven places, from 14:1 to 14:24.