and it sank deep into the national heart.
Many centuries afterwards, the ideal of a golden age was that the Lord
should "create over the whole habitation of Mount Zion, and over her
assemblies, a cloud of smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire
by night" (Isa. iv. 5).

But it has been well observed that, amid the various allusions to it in
Hebrew poetry, not one treats it as modern literature has done, with an
eye to its marvellous sublimity and picturesque effects:

"By day, along the astonished lands
The cloudy pillar glided slow:
By night, Arabia's crimsoned sands
Returned the fiery column's glow."

The Hebrew poetry is vivid and passionate, but all its concerns are
human or divine--God, and the life of man. It is not artistic, but
inspired. "The modern poet is delighting in the scenic effect; the
ancient chronicler was wholly occupied with the overshadowing power of
God."[24]

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Hutton's _Essays_, Vol. ii., _Literary: The Poetry of the Old
Test._

CHAPTER XIV.

_THE RED SEA._

xiv. 1-31.

It would seem that the Israelites recoiled before a frontier fortress of
Egypt at Khetam (Etham). This is probable, whatever theory of the route
of the Exodus one may adopt; and it is still open to every reader to
adopt almost any theory he pleases, provided that two facts are borne in
mind: viz., first, that the narrative certainly means to describe a
miraculous interference, not superseding the forces of nature, but
wielding them in a fashion impossible to man; and second, that the
phrase translated "Red Sea"[25] (xiii. 18, xv. 4) is the same which is
confessed by all persons to have that meaning in chap. xxiii. 31, and in
Numbers xxi. 4 and xxxiii. 10.

Checked, without loss or with it, they were bidden to "turn back," and
encamp at Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. And since Migdol is
simply a watch-tower (there were several in the Holy Land, including
that which gave her name to Mary Magdal-ene), we are to infer that from
thence their inexplicable movements were signalled back to Pharaoh. It
was the natural signal for all the wild passions of a baffled and
half-ruined tyrant to leap into flame. We are scarcely able to imagine
the mental condition of men who conceived that a God Who had dealt out
death and destruction might be far from invincible from another side.
But ages after this, a campaign was planned upon the ingenious theory
that "Jehovah is a