Splitting Up With Egypt

The 21st of Nisan is the seventh day of Passover, when God split Yam Suf (the Reed Sea). Days earlier, Egyptian scouts sent to ensure the Israelites’ return found them “feasting to the Lord.” The scouts later reported to Pharaoh that the Israelites refused to return.

Back in Egypt, the populace was still burying those who fell during the tenth plague, the Death of the Firstborn. The Jewish Sages relate that the death toll was far greater than it might first appear. Rashi, commenting on “And it came to pass at midnight…” (Exod. 12:29), draws from Midrashic sources to explain that the plague struck not only the obvious firstborn in each household, but every paternal firstborn—including those from illicit relationships.

As elaborated in Midrash Tanchuma and the Mechilta, there were homes in Egypt in which multiple firstborns died, because a single woman may have borne children from different fathers, each child considered a firstborn. The result was a catastrophe of staggering proportions, helping to explain why, even days after Israel’s departure, the Egyptians were still burying their dead (see Num. 33:4).

The final plague had exposed Egypt’s concealed moral disorder as well.

After the Egyptian scouts made a hasty retreat to deliver the bad news, the king’s rage was somewhat mitigated upon learning that the Israelites appeared confused and had literally turned around, marching toward the Reed Sea (Exodus 14:3).

What transpired on the seventh day of Passover was a full-on Spielbergian event, in which the sea split and then stood as walls to the right and left of the awestruck Israelites. They followed Moses into this wondrous path, while the Egyptians, somehow ignoring the icy canyon before them, gave chase. There in the midst of the sea, pharaoh's army found their graves as the roiling waters enveloped them.

Israel emerged from the sea into the Wilderness of Shur. Archaeology lends weight to the Torah’s description of Shur—literally, a “wall.” Along Egypt’s northeastern frontier, east of the Nile Delta, excavations have uncovered a chain of massive fortifications that once guarded the empire’s most vulnerable approach from Sinai and Canaan. Chief among them was Tjaru (identified with Tell Hebua), widely regarded as Egypt’s eastern gateway. This was a heavily fortified administrative and military hub, with thick mudbrick walls and controlled access points. Nearby sites such as Tell el-Borg reveal similarly robust defensive architecture, confirming that this was not a single barrier but a layered frontier system designed to repel invading armies.

This network formed part of what Egyptian sources call the Way of Horus, depicted in reliefs at Karnak Temple. Earlier texts even refer to a broader defensive concept known as the Walls of the Ruler—a system of fortresses and barriers guarding Egypt’s eastern frontier.

The Torah’s naming of the region as “Shur” is geographically precise: Israel emerged from the sea not into a landscape long defined by walls—Egypt’s line of control at the edge of its power. It very likely included the so-called “store cities,” which functioned as garrisons built by Israelite slave labor.

We find Shur referenced as early as the days of Avraham. When Hagar, Sarah’s handmaiden, fled from Beersheva, she was found “on the road to Shur” (Gen. 16:7). Hagar, originally an Egyptian princess, likely traveled toward Shur because it was the fastest route back to Egypt.

Interestingly, Yam Suf (the Reed Sea) can also be understood as “End Sea,” a name that reflects how the Sinai Peninsula terminates at its shores. The name may also carry a prophetic echo: Israel steps out of the sea and into Shur—a land of walls. Egypt trusted in its walls—its fortresses—but in the end, it wasn’t Egypt’s walls that held. It was the walls of the sea. That is the turning point.

What Egypt built to protect itself could not save it—yet what only God could shape became the path to freedom. And that is the promise of Geulah. If the Exodus proved that no empire can stand in the way of redemption, the future will prove something even greater—that in the end, every wall falls.

The prophet teaches in Micah 7:15: “As in the days of your coming forth out of the land of Egypt, I will show him marvelous things.”