Red Sea
Red Sea is a river mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Sinai in modern-day Egypt. Known today as Gulf of Suez. It appears across 3 verses in Scripture.
Biblical History
The Red Sea, specifically the Gulf of Suez region, holds a central place in Israel's foundational narrative. This body of water first appears prominently in the Exodus account, where God parted its waters to deliver the Israelites from Pharaoh's pursuing army (Exodus 14:21-29). The crossing of the Red Sea became the defining act of divine salvation in the Old Testament, celebrated in the Song of Moses (Exodus 15:1-21) and recalled throughout Scripture as proof of God's sovereign power over creation. The miraculous parting demonstrated that Israel's God commanded authority over the natural world in ways Egypt's gods could not match. After the crossing, the waters returned to drown Pharaoh's chariots and horsemen, an event that would echo through Israel's psalms, prophecies, and liturgical memory for centuries. The prophets frequently invoked the Red Sea crossing as a paradigm for future acts of redemption (Isaiah 51:10; Psalm 106:9-12). In the New Testament, the apostle Paul cited the crossing as a type of baptism (1 Corinthians 10:1-2), and the author of Hebrews listed it among the great acts of faith (Hebrews 11:29).
Archaeological & Historical Notes
The Gulf of Suez, the western arm of the Red Sea, stretches approximately 314 kilometers between the Sinai Peninsula and the Egyptian mainland. The precise crossing location remains debated among scholars. Some propose a northern route near the Bitter Lakes region, which was connected to the Red Sea in antiquity, while others favor a more southerly crossing point along the gulf itself. Egyptian records from the New Kingdom period document military activity and fortification lines along this corridor. Underwater surveys have explored various locations but have not produced definitive evidence of the crossing event. The gulf remains an active waterway today, bordered by the Egyptian resort city of Suez at its northern end.
Verse Appearances (3)
Exod
References
- Orr, J. (ed.) (1915) The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Chicago: Howard-Severance Company. [Public Domain]
- OpenBible.info (n.d.) Bible Geocoding. Available at: https://www.openbible.info/geo/. [CC BY 4.0]
- Bagnall, R. et al. (eds.) (n.d.) Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places. Available at: https://pleiades.stoa.org. [CC BY 3.0]
- Wikidata contributors (n.d.) Wikidata. Available at: https://www.wikidata.org. [CC0]
- Lawrence, D. et al. (2025) Villages to Empires: a settlement dataset for the Southern Levant. doi:10.5281/zenodo.15111732. [CC BY 4.0]
- Church of England (1769) The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version. [Public Domain]