The Miracle at the Red Sea and the True Location of Mount Sinai

The road the Israelites took out of Egypt was an eleven-day journey, yet they wandered its course for forty years. The traditional sites of the Red Sea and Mount Sinai fail to match the biblical text at several points. The Gulf of Suez is shallow and narrow, so it is hard to picture a people who had left in haste crossing there. The mountain on the Sinai Peninsula is no more than a site the Church in Rome designated on conjecture in the sixth century.

Scripture describes the Yam Suph as great, deep and wide waters that stood like a wall on either side. Off Nuweiba in the Gulf of Aqaba, the width and depth of the sea, its gentle slope and even the remains of chariot wheels found there all fit that account. On the far shore, Jabal al-Lawz likewise has what Mount Sinai ought to have: a scorched summit, stone pillars for the twelve tribes, traces of the altar Aaron built for the golden calf, a flowing stream and a cave.

These events lie 3,500 years in the past, so none of this can be settled for certain. Yet such traces bear witness to God at work in real history, not in a parable on paper. Even so, as Jesus said to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed.” In the end faith is not produced by evidence. It is received only when God gives it as a gift.