36 | JANUARY 13 • 2022 

I

n September 2010, BBC, Reuters 
and other news agencies reported 
on a sensational scientific discov-
ery. Researchers at the U.S. National 
Center for Atmospheric Research and 
the University of Colorado had shown 
through computer simulation how the 
division of the Red Sea may have taken 
place. 
Using sophisticated mod-
eling, they demonstrated 
how a strong east wind, 
blowing overnight, could 
have pushed water back at a 
bend where an ancient river 
is believed to have merged 
with a coastal lagoon. The 
water would have been 
guided into the two waterways and a 
land bridge would have opened at the 
bend, allowing people to walk across the 
exposed mud flats. As soon as the wind 
died down, the waters would have rushed 
back in. As the leader of the project said 
when the report was published: “The 
simulations match fairly closely with the 
account in Exodus.” 
So, we now have scientific evidence to 
support the biblical account; though to be 
fair, a very similar case was made some 
years ago by Colin Humphreys, profes-
sor of materials science at Cambridge 

University and professor of experimental 
physics at the Royal Institution in London, 
in his book The Miracles of Exodus. 
To me, though, the real issue is what the 
biblical account actually is. Because it is 
just here that we have one of the most fas-
cinating features of the way the Torah tells 
its stories. Here is the key passage: “Then 
Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, 
and all that night the Lord drove the sea 
back with a strong east wind and turned 
it into dry land. The waters were divided, 
and the Israelites went through the sea on 
dry ground, with a wall of water on their 
right and on their left. (Ex. 14:21-22) 
The passage can be read two ways. The 
first is that what happened was a suspen-
sion of the laws of nature. It was a super-
natural event. The waters stood, literally, 
like a wall. 
The second is that what happened 
was miraculous not because the laws of 
nature were suspended. To the contrary, 
as the computer simulation shows, the 
exposure of dry land at a particular point 
in the Red Sea was a natural outcome 
of the strong east wind. What made it 
miraculous is that it happened just there, 
just then, when the Israelites seemed 
trapped, unable to go forward because of 
the sea, unable to turn back because of the 
Egyptian army pursuing them. 

There is a significant difference between 
these two interpretations. The first appeals 
to our sense of wonder. How extraordi-
nary that the laws of nature should be 
suspended to allow an escaping people to 
go free. It is a story to appeal to the imagi-
nation of a child. 
But the naturalistic explanation is won-
drous at another level entirely. Here the 
Torah is using the device of irony. What 
made the Egyptians of the time of Ramses 
so formidable was the fact that they pos-
sessed the latest and most powerful form 
of military technology, the horse-drawn 
chariot. It made them unbeatable in battle 
and fearsome. 
What happens at the sea is poetic jus-
tice of the most exquisite kind. There is 
only one circumstance in which a group 
of people traveling by foot can escape a 
highly trained army of charioteers, namely 
when the route passes through a muddy 
seabed. The people can walk across, but 
the chariot wheels get stuck in the mud. 
The Egyptian army can neither advance 
nor retreat. The wind drops. The water 
returns. The powerful are now powerless, 
while the powerless have made their way 
to freedom. 
This second narrative has a moral depth 
that the first does not; and it resonates 
with the message of the book of Psalms: 

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

The Power of Ruach 

