The majority of the people including the Pharaoh of Egypt, ignored the warning signs God sent repeatedly. The people pleaded with Moses, promising to pray to God alone and to free the Children of Israel, but they kept breaking their promises. Finally, God revoked His mercy and gave the order for Moses to guide his people out of Egypt.
“But when we lifted the suffering over them to a fixed term, that they had to reach, observe! They broke their promise! So We took punishment from them. We sank them in the sea, because they denied Our signs, and were careless about them.” (Qur’an 7: 130-136)
The Pharaoh’s spies knew that something serious was happening, and the Pharaoh asked for a meeting of his most esteemed advisors. They resolved to gather the entire armed forces to track the fleeing slaves. Assembling the army took all night and the Pharaoh’s army did not leave the borders of the city until dawn.
They marched into the desert and it was not long before the dust raised by the approaching army could be seen in the distance. The Children of Israel did not arrive at the edge of the Red Sea long before the front line of the army.
They were trapped between the Red Sea in front of them, and the avenging army at their back. Panic and fear began to spread within their ranks and they begged Moses to save them.
Moses had been walking at the back of his people and he could see the army approaching. He made his way through the crowd to the edge of the sea. He walked amongst his people easing their fears and telling them to keep faith and continue believing that God would not abandon them.
At the tip of the Red Sea, Moses stood and gazed out toward the horizon. Ibn Kathir states that Joshua looked to Moses and said, “ahead of us is this difficult barrier, the sea, and at the back of us the enemy; indeed death is certain!” Moses did not fear; he stood quietly and expected for God to keep His promise, freeing the Children of Israel.
At that moment, as fear swept over the Children of Israel, God inspired Moses to strike the sea with his stick.
A fierce blowing wind began; the sea started to swirl and spin, and quickly it parted to show a pathway; the ground of the sea became dry enough for them to walk across it.
Moses began to guide the people across the dry passage in the middle of the sea. He waited until the last person had started walking across the sea before he looked back at the advancing army and then followed his people across the seabed. As they approached the other side, the fear and panic overwhelmed the Children of Israel. They once again began to ask and beg for Moses to close the passage.
Moses rejected their pleas; God’s plan was already in motion, and he was confident that they would be saved even though the Pharaoh’s army had chased them into the dry seabed passageway.
“And We guided the Children of Israel across the sea, and Pharaoh with his armies followed them in oppression and hatred.”
When the sea drowned the army behind them he said, “none has the right to be praised but He, in what the Children of Israel regard, I am one of the Muslims (those who resign to God’s Will).”
Ibn Kathir narrates the death of the Pharaoh, “The curtain dropped on Pharaoh’s tyranny, and the tides threw his corpse up to the westward seashore. The Egyptians recognised him and knew that the god whom they prayed and obeyed was a mere man who could not hold death away from his neck.”
When Pharaoh had the wealth, power, strength, and good health he refused to acknowledge God, but when he saw death awaiting he cried out to God with horror and fear. If humankind remembers God in moments of ease, God will remember even the humblest of human beings in times of distress.