threatened it on the west:  on the north, bands of sea-pirates from the coasts of Asia Minor and the islands of the Mediterranean attacked it by sea and land.  A mutilated inscription of Meneptah tells us how the tents of the invaders had been pitched on the outskirts of the land of Goshen, within reach of the Bedawin shepherds who fed their flocks there, and how the troops of the Pharaoh, pressed at once by the enemy and by the disaffected population of Goshen, had been cooped up within the walls of the great cities, afraid to venture forth.  The fate of the invasion was sealed, however, by a decisive battle in which the Egyptians almost annihilated their foes.  But the land of Goshen was left empty and desolate; the foreign tribes who had dwelt in it fled into the wilderness under the cover of the Libyan invasion.  The pressure of the invasion had forced the Pharaoh to allow his serfs a free passage out of Egypt, quite as much as the “signs and wonders” which were wrought by the hand of Moses.  Egypt was protected on its eastern side by a line of fortifications, and through these permission was given that the Israelites should pass.  But the permission was hardly given before it was recalled.  A small body of cavalry, not move than six hundred in number, was sent in pursuit of the fugitives, who were loaded with the plunder they had carried away from the Egyptians.  They were a disorganised and unwarlike multitude, consisting partly of serfs, partly of women and children, partly of stragglers from the armies of the Libyan and Mediterranean invaders.  Six hundred men were deemed sufficient either to destroy them or to reduce them once more to captivity.

But the fugitives escaped as it were by miracle.  A violent wind from the east drove back the shallow waters at the head of the Gulf of Suez, by the side of which they were encamped, and the Israelites passed dryshod over the bed of “the sea.”  Before their pursuers could overtake them, the wind had veered, and the waters returned on the Egyptian chariots.  The slaves were free at last, once more in the wilderness in which Isaac had tended his flocks, and in contact with their kinsmen of Edom and Midian.

Moses had led them out of Egypt, and Moses now became their lawgiver.  The laws which he gave them formed them into a nation, and laid the foundations of the national faith.  Henceforth they were to be a separate people, bound together by the worship of one God, who had revealed Himself to them under the name of Yahveh.  First at Sinai, among the mountains of Seir and Paran, and then at Kadesh-barnea, the modern ’Ain Qadis, the Mosaic legislation was promulgated.  The first code was compiled under the shadow of Mount Sinai; its provisions were subsequently enlarged or modified by the waters of En-Mishat, “the Spring of Judgment.”