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7 Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt, Here he relates how the people immediately, from the very commencement of their emancipation from bondage, were ungrateful to God, and conducted themselves in a rebellious manner. Nor does he confine himself to the history of one period only, but the whole drift of his narrative is to point out that the people had never ceased from doing wickedly, although God met them in return with inconceivable kindness; which is a proof of the invincible and desperate perversity of this nation. He first blames the folly of the people as the occasion of such ingratitude. In calling it folly, he does not intend to lessen the offense, (as some are often wont to do,) but to expose the vile and disgraceful stupidity of the people, in being blind in matters so plain; for God’s works were such that even the blind might behold them. Whence could such gross ignorance originate, unless that Satan had so maddened them that they did not regard the miracles of God, which might have moved the very stones? Now, when he adds, they remembered not, he expresses more forcibly the inexcusable nature of their ignorance, nay, that their blindness was the result of stupid indifference, more than the want of proper instruction. For the cause of their ignorance was their overlooking those matters which, in themselves, were abundantly manifest. He further mentions how quickly that forgetfulness came upon them, which tended to increase their guilt. For it was marvelous that not even the very sight of these things could arouse their spirits. Hence it came to pass, that while they had scarcely made their departure from Egypt, and were passing through the sea, they proudly rose up against their deliverer. Surely not one year, nor even a century, ought to have erased from their minds deeds so worthy of being remembered. What madness, then, at that very time to murmur against God, as if he had abandoned them to be slaughtered by their enemies? That arm of the sea through which the people passed is, in the Hebrew, called the Sea of Suph. Some translate it the Sea of Sedge, and will have the word סופ, suph, to signify sea-weed. ²⁴⁴²⁴⁴     “At the Red Sea, i.e., at the Arabian Gulf; literally, at the Sea of Suph, which, if Suph be not here a proper name, (as it seems to be in Deuteronomy 1:1 and, with a slight variation, in Numbers 21:14) means the sea of weeds; and that sea is still called by a similar name in modern Egypt. This, its designation throughout the books of the Old Testament, is in the Syriac version and the Chaldee paraphrase likewise rendered the sea of weeds; which name may have been derived from the weeds growing near its shore, or from the weeds, or coralline productions, with which, according to Diodorus Siculus and Kircher, it abounded; and which were seen through its translucent waters. Finati, quoted by Laborde, speaks of the transparency of its waters, and the corals seen at its bottom ” — Cresswell. It has sometimes been asserted that this sea received the appellation of Red from its color. But it has been abundantly attested by those who have seen it, that it is no more red than any other sea. Niebuhr, in his description of Arabia, says, “The Europeans are accustomed to give the Arabian Gulf the name of Red Sea; nevertheless, I have not found it any more red than the Black Sea or the White Sea, or any other sea in the world.” Artemidorus in Strabo expressly tells us that “it looks of a green color, by reason of the abundance of sea-weed and moss that grow in it;” which Diodorus Siculus also asserts of a particular part of it. It appears to have derived its name of “Red Sea” from Edom, which signifies red. Although throughout the whole Scriptures of the Old Testament it is called Yam Suph, the weedy sea, yet among the ancient inhabitants of the countries adjoining it was called Yam Edom, the sea of Edom, (1 Kings 9:26; 2 Chronicles 8:17, 18,) the land of Edom having extended to the Arabian Gulf; and the Edomites or Idumeans having occupied at one time a part, if not the whole, of Arabia Petraea. The Greeks, who took the name of the sea from the Phoenicians, who called it Yam Edom, instead of rendering it the sea of Edom, or, the Idumean Sea, as they ought to have done, took the word Edom, by mistake, for an appellative, instead of a proper name, and accordingly rendered it ερυθρα θαλασσα, that is, the Red Sea. Hence the LXX. translate Yam Suph, by the Red Sea; in which they have been followed by the authors of our English version. But the sea of weeds is undoubtedly the best translation of the Hebrew text. — See Prideaux’ Connections, etc., volume 1, pages 39, 40. But whatever be its derivation, there can be no doubt about the place. It is very likely that the name was given to it because it abounded with rushes.

8 And saved them The prophet here teaches what any one could easily learn from the preceding sentence, that the Israelites were saved, not on account of their deserving to be so, but because God had a regard to his own glory. That obstacle being removed, God went on to accomplish that deliverance which he had commenced, in order that his holy name might not become a reproach among the heathen. Besides, we must not overlook the antithesis between the name of God and the merits of men, because God, out of a regard to his own glory, can find in us no cause wherefore he should be moved to save us. The inestimable kindness of God, which, for the sake of a people so perverse, altered the usual order of nature, is more illustriously displayed by the account which is afterwards given of the means by which they were preserved. When he says that the sea was rebuked, he extols the power of God, at whose command and will the sea was dried up — the waters receded, so that a free passage was opened up between the opposite heaps of waters. With the design of magnifying the miracle, he employs a similitude, which, in all likelihood, was drawn from Isaiah; for in the sixty-third chapter and thirteenth verse, he says, “Thou hast made thy people to walk through the deeps, as an horse in the wilderness, that he might not stumble.” When the people walked through the sea as upon a dry plain, the prophet informs us that this was done solely by the astonishing power of God. It is quite possible, that in the desert in which the people wandered, there was many an abyss, the path rugged, and many a hill and dale and ragged rock. But it cannot be doubted that the prophet extols the power of God in the passage through the sea, and enhances it by this consideration, that the path through that deep sea was smooth. Besides, he gives greater strength to the miracle in saying that their enemies were drowned; because, when the sea afforded a free passage to the children of Israel, and covered and engulfed the Egyptians, so that not one of them escaped alive, whence proceeded this instantaneous difference, but from this, that God made a distinction between the one people and the other?