1. Then the Lord spoke to Moses:
2. Speak to the Israelites: Let them turn about and camp before Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. Camp in front of Baal-zephon, just opposite, by the sea.
3. Pharaoh will then say, “The Israelites are wandering about aimlessly in the land. The wilderness has closed in on them.”
4. I will so harden Pharaoh’s heart that he will pursue them. Thus I will receive glory through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.This the Israelites did.
5. When it was reported to the king of Egypt that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his servants had a change of heart about the people. “What in the world have we done!” they said. “We have released Israel from our service!”
6. So Pharaoh harnessed his chariots and took his army with him.
7. He took six hundred select chariots and all the chariots of Egypt, with officers on all of them.
8. The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, so that he pursued the Israelites while they were going out in triumph.
9. The Egyptians pursued them—all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, his horsemen, and his army—and caught up with them as they lay encamped by the sea, at Pi-hahiroth, in front of Baal-zephon.
10. Now Pharaoh was near when the Israelites looked up and saw that the Egyptians had set out after them. Greatly frightened, the Israelites cried out to the Lord.
11. To Moses they said, “Were there no burial places in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt?
12. Did we not tell you this in Egypt, when we said, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? Far better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”