That day the Lord saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. The salvation is complete and visible: Israel saw. The Egyptians lying dead on the shore are the confirmation that the threat is real and the salvation is real and the God who fought for Israel is real. The bodies on the shore are the inverse of the living, pursuing army that stood on the shore of the wilderness side of the sea the previous night. What was threat is now corpse. What was slavery is now freedom. What was Egypt's pursuing force is now the sea's debris. The word saved — yasha, from the same root as Joshua and Jesus — appears for the first time in Exodus in this verse. The founding act of salvation in Israel's history is named with the name that the New Testament will use for the founding act of salvation in human history.

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