the Red Sea. The Hebrew yam
sufin all likelihood refers to two different bodies of water. In the Exodus
story, it seems to be a like or marshland in the north of Egypt, the Sea of Reeds.
Elsewhere, it does designate the Red Sea, and there the Israelites are clearly being
sent south toward Aqabah and the Red Sea, not back to Egypt. This summarizing
notation of the movements of the Israelites makes it the conclusion of this
whole literary unit, though the conventional chapter division sets it at the
beginning of chapter 2. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New
York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 1:622)
