02/10/2024
This upcoming Lord's Day, we look at Exodus 14-15 and the triumph of Jesus Christ. Consider this excerpt from the Old English Exodus (trans. by JRR Tolkien): "When the Mighty One with holy hand, Guardian of Heaven’s realm, smote the men accursed, the peoples proud might not restrain the onrush of those allies, the fury of the streams of the sea; nay, many it destroyed, shrieking, horrible. Mad was the deep. Up it climbed, on them it slithered down. Terrors menaced them. Deadly wounds were flowing. Down from heaven upon the retreat fell the high work of the hand of God; with front of foam the flood struck their guard; smote them shelterless as with a sword, so that with that death-blow the regiments died, the hosts of the sinful. They lost their lives inescapably hemmed-in, the gleaming army in the midst of the sea, when into its bosom in wrath the water took them, the greatest of angry waves— all the mighty host perished—and drowned in death the flower of the Egyptians, Pharaoh with his folk. Swiftly did God’s adversary find, when ocean mounted o’er him, that mightier was the Lord of the floods of the sea, that He purposed, terrible in His ire, with fell embrace to set an end to war. Unto the Egyptians for the deeds of that day was decreed a payment dread, for of that army innumerable home came never one surviving man who might recount their hap, nor tell from town to town those greatest tidings dire, the fall of the lords of wealth, unto the queens of men. Nay, those mighty regiments death swallowed in the sea, destroyed the bearer of tidings who had not the fortune (to escape), and poured to waste the vaunts of men. They had warred with God!"
