e dread power shown in the infliction during one
night of not less than a million of deaths, produced a complete
revolution in the mind of the king, and made him as anxious at the
moment to get rid of the Israelites out of his country as he had
previously been anxious to retain them. So he called for Moses and Aaron
by night and said. "Rise up, get you forth from among my people, both ye
and the children of Israel, and go, serve the Lord, as ye have said.
Also take your flocks and your herds, as ye have said, and be gone; and
bless me also" (Ex. xii. 31, 32). Moses was prepared for the event, and
had prepared his people. All were ready, with their loins girded, their
sandals on their feet, and their staves in their hands; the word was
given, and the exodus began. "The children of Israel journeyed from
Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot that were men,
beside children; and a mixed multitude went up also with them; and
flocks, and herds, even very much cattle."

Hereupon the king's mind underwent another change. "Unstable as water,"
he was certain not to "excel." Learning that the Israelites, instead of
marching away into the desert, had after reaching its edge turned
southward, and were "entangled" in a corner of his territory, between
high mountains on the one hand, and on the other the Red Sea, which
then stretched far further to the north than at present, perhaps to Lake
Timseh, at any rate as far as the "Bitter Lakes," he thought he saw an
opportunity of following and recovering the fugitives, whose services as
bondsmen he highly valued. Rapidly calling together such troops as were
tolerably near at hand, he collected a considerable force of infantry
and chariots--of the latter more than six hundred--and following upon
the steps of the Hebrews, he caught them on the western shore of the Red
Sea, encamped "between Migdol and the sea, over against Baal-Zephon."
The exact spot cannot be fixed, on account of the alterations in the bed
of the Red Sea, and the uncertainty of the ancient geography of Egypt,
in which names so often repeat themselves; but it was probably some part
of the region that is now dry land, between Suez and the southern
extremity of the Bitter Lakes. Here in high tides the sea and the lakes
communicated; but on the evening of Menephthah's arrival, an unusual ebb
of the tide, cooperating with a "strong east wind" which held back the
water of the Bitter Lakes, left the bed of the sea