Commentaria in Exodum
But this tradition is uncertain, and of it there is no mention in Scripture, which would not have been silent on so memorable a thing; nay, Philo, Theodoret, Abulensis, Lyranus and Euthymius on Psalm 135, and others, teach that there was only one cleaving of the sea; and Scripture sufficiently intimates it when it says that the water was divided, where the Hebrew has ibbaku hammaim, and the Septuagint, “the water was cleft,” as we cleave wood when we split it into two parts. Then verse 22 says that there was a wall of water on the right of the Hebrews and on the left, and that they went through the midst of the channel: therefore there was one cleaving, not twelve. This opinion is favoured also by what is said in Psalm 105, verse 9: “He led them through the depths (in Greek, in the abyss) as through a wilderness,” that is, by a very broad way, such as there are in the desert, for example in the myrtle groves of the Campania; there was therefore only one cleaving of the sea, and that a very broad one.
To that of Psalm 135, I answer: One division is called divisions, both on account of its amplitude, because one was like several, says Lyranus; and because divisions are put for things, or parts, divided; but these were several, that is, two: for the Hebrews have the same plural and dual number: whence they call two several. Divisions, therefore, here are called the two sides of the divided sea, which stood like two walls on each side, offering the Hebrews a passage between. Moses here explains these divisions, when he says that God so divided the sea that the waters were to the Hebrews as a wall on the right hand and on the left.
22. AND THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL WENT IN THROUGH THE MIDST OF THE SEA DRIED UP,—Moses going before, says Josephus. There is a tradition that the tribe of Juda and its leader Aminadab, the rest trembling, first entered the sea, and that therefore the tribe of Juda was afterwards first and leader of the others, and deserved the kingdom; and that Canticles chap. 6, verse 11, alludes to this: “My soul troubled me for the chariots of Aminadab.” And Osee chap. 11, last verse: “But Juda is a witness with God, and is faithful to the saints”; although St. Jerome there calls this tradition a fable.
Note “dried up”: for the bottom of the sea was not dry as sand is dry, but as a field is dry through which travellers pleasantly pass with dry foot. For this is what the Wise Man says, chap. 19, verse 7: “In the Red Sea a way without impediment, and a green field springing up out of the deep water”; which although Jansenius there explains figuratively, as if to say: So pleasantly did the Hebrews pass through the bed of the sea as if they had passed through a field flourishing with leaves and flowers: yet better our Joannes Lorinus there, and Pineda on Job chap. 26, verse 5, take it literally. For Pliny, book 13, chap. 25, relates that the bed of the Red Sea is grassy, bearing olive and laurel. Our Gaspar Sanchez adds on Isaias chap. 63, verse 13, that God, as by miracle He dried and levelled the bed of the Red Sea for the Hebrews, so by miracle He caused the same bed suddenly to sprout and flourish like a most pleasant field, for the consolation and delight of the Hebrews. For there the Wise Man celebrates not the works of nature but the miraculous works of God.
See here the goodness and power of God towards His own: “If you obey His will, if you follow His law, He will compel the very elements, even against their nature, to serve you,” says Origen. So He made fire serve the three children in the Babylonian furnace, that it sent upon them a sweet breeze and, as it were, a cooling wind of dew, but burned the impious Chaldeans. So He made the waters of the flood serve Noe, bearing and preserving him in the ark, but drowning the impious. So He made the lions serve Daniel in the pit; the sun serve Josue to pursue the victory, Josue 10, 13; the Jordan serve the Hebrews for passing into Chanaan, Josue 3, 16; the thunders serve Samuel, 1 Kings 12, 18; the ravens serve Elias, to bring him bread; the bears serve Eliseus, to punish and tear the boys who mocked him. So Christ and the Apostles served: fire at Pentecost; air and winds, when at His command they were silent; the sea, when He walked upon it, and when at His command it gave Peter fishing a multitude of fishes; earth and rocks, when they were rent in the passion; Angels, when they gave the Magi the star, the sign of Christ born, and when they sang: Glory to God in the highest. So fishes and birds served St. Francis, when they applauded and sang to him as he preached, and at his command again were silent. So Satyrs and Fauns showed St. Antony the way to St. Paul, and lions dug with their claws the grave in which he should bury St. Paul. So the mountain served Gregory Thaumaturgus, when it gave way to the place that he might build a church; likewise the river Lycus, when it drew itself in, lest it overflow the fields. So the winds served the pious Emperor Theodosius, when they turned the weapons of the enemy back upon themselves, in the battle against the tyrant Eugenius. So spiders served St. Felix of Nola, when they suddenly wove their webs over him, that he might not be found by his pursuers. His memory is kept on January 14.
Orosius relates, book 1, chap. 10, that the footprints of this entrance and passage of the Hebrews, and the track of the chariots and ruts of the wheels, remain, and are always divinely renewed, both on the shore and in the Red Sea itself (where he adds that about this time also happened the burning of Phaethon). The same Diodorus intimates in the Catena, who was the teacher of St. Chrysostom, who adds also that the Gentiles ascribed this passage of the Hebrews with dry foot through the sea not to a miracle but to the ebb and flow of the sea. The Memphites said the same, according to Eusebius, book 9 of the Preparation, last chapter; nay Josephus doubts whether this division of the sea was miraculous or natural. “For both under the leadership of Alexander the Great,” he says, “the Pamphylian sea gave way, and opened a path, God so having decreed by his means, to destroy the empire of the Persians.”
But it is most clear that this division of the sea was a huge miracle: for no reciprocation of the sea cleaves the sea so that in the midst of it a most ample way is made for passing, as was done here; for the ebb of the sea only lays bare of waters the shores, or places near the shores. Again, no ebb of the sea causes the waters on both sides to rise up like a wall, and to stand motionless until the people pass over, and presently to be rolled back upon the enemies pursuing them.
What Josephus says of the Pamphylian sea, that it gave way to Alexander, is a fable; for, as Strabo teaches, book 14, Alexander did not penetrate and wade through it, but only skirting its shore obliquely passed with his men up to the navel; yet in this his daring he had prosperous fortune, in that, crossing it in winter, he was not overwhelmed by its waves returning.
Note: Similar to this division of the sea was the division of the Jordan, made under Josue, by which the Hebrews penetrated into Chanaan; yet it was dissimilar to that, first, in that the division of the sea was made by Moses, stretching his rod over it; but the division of the Jordan by the presence of the ark of the Lord. Secondly, in the divided sea the waters stood on either side like walls; in the Jordan, however, the lower part flowed down into the Dead Sea, the upper part stood still and swelled continually with the waters flowing in; but when the Hebrews had crossed, it subsided and flowed down not suddenly but gradually, lest it overwhelm the banks and fields, and in this respect the division of the Jordan was more wonderful than that of the Red Sea. Thirdly, in the sea the Egyptians were drowned; but no one was drowned in the Jordan. Fourthly, in the sea God sent a wind to dry the muddy bottom; this He did not do in the Jordan, because its bed is small and sandy.
Hence it is plain that the division of the sea was far greater and more wonderful than that of the Jordan. Whence the Chanaanites and other Gentiles, on hearing of it, were astounded and lost heart, as is plain from Josue 2, 11, and Judith chap. 5.
Allegorically, as the Apostle says in 1 Corinthians 10: “Our fathers were all baptized in Moses, in the cloud and in the sea”; for the passage through the Red Sea signified that Christians, through baptism and the blood of Christ contained in baptism, pass into the new life of grace; the cloud signified the sanctification of the Holy Spirit, Moses Christ, the rod the cross, Pharao the devil and sin, the manna the Eucharist. So Theodoret, Origen and Ambrose, book 1 On the Sacraments, chap. 6; Augustine, sermon 90; Prosper, 1, On the Promises and Predictions, chap. 38; Tertullian, book.