Letter to a Chariot Driver (Exodus 14)

Dear Chariot Driver,

You are representative of the ordinary service personnel who suffer and die when rulers order you into an action which may be futile. Yet you also represent how ordinary people may be motivated into the actions they are because of fear and the desire to exact revenge too.

I am assuming you had a child or children or brothers or sisters. You had suffered loss and pain over a sustained period of time due to the acts of Pharaoh and God hardening his heart. You would have been in a state of anger and fear I suspect and so we can understand why you may have wished to exact revenge on those who you believed had caused you so much suffering.

I suspect that there would have been a sense of relief you were rid of the Israelites and the suffering which had been caused as Pharaoh would not let them go. Yet, I also imagine that you may have had feelings of hate against them which I cannot imagine or understand which came out of the suffering you had endured.

As I say you were also being ordered into action by the Pharaoh and other senior officials. It would have been almost impossible for you not to comply to these orders.

When the cloud came down as you were in the water what was it like? I imagine the horror must have been unimaginable, with the horses panicking and the noise which would have been generated as people sought not to avoid one another but couldn’t as the wheels got clogged and the screams as people died, even before the waters came over.

You wanted to escape but you were not given the chance. You died in the water in what must have been a horrific event, seeing the events of your life come before you.

I cannot understand your situation or the actions your people took with regard to keeping and abusing slaves, just as I cannot understand much of the horror in the world today.

As I read this living in a situation where people around the world are still dying in violence which is so often rooted in revenge and fear and the acts of those who are seeking to exploit those feelings in others I have to pause.

I have been taught to see the Egyptians who were keeping the Israelites in fear as “the baddies” and the Israelites being led by Moses into freedom as “the goodies”. The truth is in this situation there were too many ordinary people, who are innocent, suffering as victims on sides all. The narrative of the Old Testament is not as I have been taught to read it.

It is complicated, just as the current situation in the Middle East is. The Palestinians are suffering and need their freedom, but at the same time many ordinary Israelis are too.

This part of Exodus has taught me very much to question see things more widely and to identify how far too many people are dying or living with pain, bereavement and injury – leading to fear and a desire for revenge. To reduce things to “the oppressed” and “the oppressor” is too simplistic, just as I think my engagement with the bible (on a non-academic level) has been.