Week 3 Exodus 14
While I’m reading about the exodus today I’m still thinking about David’s comment: some nations boast of their armies and weapons but we boast in the Lord our God. Which means – roughly – that a difference of opinion will emerge when people have different assumptions about what they can or can’t rely on.
That difference of opinion comes to life in the story of Israel’s escape from Egypt. It’s a case study of an event where a man with a numerically superior force assumed that numerical superiority would ensure a predictable outcome.
The only hard data I can discover is that Pharaoh had 600 top-of-the-line chariots (plus all the other chariots in the country) and had officers in each of them. Things that I don’t know are the ratio of officers to soldiers & the size of the cavalry & the number of infantry & if there were mercenaries and like that. Comprehensive numbers are tough to land on.
But Egypt was fighting an unarmed ragtag bunch of slaves. Sure…there were a lot of them – 600,000 men – but the contest really shaped up to be like shooting fish in a barrel. On paper the Egyptian army should have massacred the Hebrews.
So…question: if I had total material dominance over a foe would it be possible for that enemy to defeat me?
Answer #1: Not very likely.
Answer #2 (David’s answer): Wrong question! You should be asking: who or what can the enemy count on for help?
Note: quote from Psalm 20:7 (NLT). And see Exodus 14:7 & 12:37.