Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Passover: Splitting the Sea

Dry Bones cartoon - Exodus - at the Red Sea
Moses had secured a peace agreement with the Egyptians but they, well, had second thoughts about it, which is why the war chariots of the Egyptians were now tearing up the desert as they raced to reach and kill us. And we stood there at the edge of the Sea. Trapped!

And this great, miraculous, heroic, fantastic moment of history was marred by... a spelling error!!

The sea was a marsh, filled with bullrushes and reeds. The name of the sea was the Reed Sea. But when the word for reed (soof in Hebrew) was translated into English, reed was misspelled as red!!

. . . and because of that dopey spelling mistake, the sea is still called (in English) the Red Sea until this day.

Sea of Reeds
Reed Sea

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