# Exodus Chapter 14 --- ## Summarrium The Lord informs Moses that the people of Israel are to camp by the sea to provoke Egypt so that Pharaoh and all his host might know YHWH is the Lord. The Egyptians hear news of the Israelites flight and once again experience a change of heart deciding to pursue them. The people highlight that Moses has brought calamity upon them and that it would have been better to have been alive and a slave, than dead in the wilderness. Moses tells the people to stand firm and that the Lord will deliver them. The Lord then stands as a rear guard whilst Moses parts the red sea and leads the people of God through to the other side. The lord then commands that Moses close the parting on the Egyptians to bring glory to his name. Israel then say the great power that God used against the Egyptians and feared the Lord and believed in his servant Moses. ## Meditatio Today I spent the day immersed in the work of [Alfred North Whitehead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead) from what I've read so far Whitehead rejects a substance ontology and argues the fundamental building blocks of reality are 'actual occasions' which can be understood as 'events' or 'moments' in time. These occasions are in the process of 'becoming' actual. This process of 'becoming' entails occasions prehending each other. That is to say each successive occasion is the resolution (or repetition) of the influence of prior occasions. As far as I can tell the difference between this and traditional causality is that the latter is seen to be a deterministic transmission of energy. For Whitehead all things prehend but not all things are conscious. All things have a degrees of responsiveness, but not all things are aware. A plant prehends sunlight in its autopoetic response but is no more conscious of it than a particle that prehends electromagnetic forces adjusting behavior accordingly. Neither respond consciously but both nonetheless demonstrate variable degrees of responsiveness to the influence of prior occasions. Applying this to epistemology Whitehead would reject the notion of knowledge existing as a static set of facts we 'have'. He instead would argue it is a recurring pattern of prehension across multiple occasions. Created through the historic influence of prior occasions with each contributing a tacit inheritance that makes up the pattern in its present form. Each iteration become a novel resolution of past influence, in an ongoing process in which knowledge is always being realised. Unlike Hegel, for Whitehead contradiction is not merely to be overcome by negation, but is a condition for novelty What does any of this have to do with Exodus 14? What I love about process thought is the acknowledgement that the miracle of the parting of the sea is not a break in the natural order, but an *instance* and example of nature. God does not coercively override natural processes but offers novel possibilities (or “initial aims”) to creatures, guiding them toward his desirable outcomes. In the resolution of occasions there existed the possibility that Moses might not obey in which case the outcome would be less desirable. Consider for a moment how humans managed going their own way after the fall. The Egyptians by contrast typify the rigid self destructive patterns that resist the lure towards harmonious and creative order. It might be seen as a failure to adapt; the waters of chaos that submerge and ultimately drown them. This might have been avoided had the Egyptians heeded the patient warnings of the Lord. The crossing of the red sea is not a conclusion to the journey but represents a passing from slavery and death into new life. A new phase of becoming with fresh possibilities and challenges symbolically represented by the practice of baptism. Israels old self has perished as they have embraced a new future that, for the present moment, is characterised by steadfastness and trust in the Lord.