Exodus 14 explained

The Hebrew verb for Pharaoh making his heart heavy (8:15) is the verb the LORD uses when he says, "I will get honor over Pharaoh" (14:4), and in "they drove them heavily" (14:25), "heavily" is a noun from the same family. The "wall" of water (14:22) is the Hebrew Bible's usual word for a city wall, used here for the first time.

The place where Israel ends up hemmed in is the place the LORD told them to camp. He tells Moses to have the people "turn back and encamp before Pihahiroth, between Migdol and the sea" (14:2). He tells Moses what Pharaoh will think: "They are entangled in the land. The wilderness has shut them in" (14:3). And he says what will happen: "I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will follow after them; and I will get honor over Pharaoh, and over all his armies; and the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD" (14:4). Then the chapter adds, "They did so" (14:4).

Hebrews says, "By faith they passed through the Red Sea as on dry land" (Hebrews 11:29). Yet when they first saw the Egyptians, "they were very afraid" (14:10), and they told Moses, "it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness" (14:12). The chapter ends, "they believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses" (14:31).

Hebrews 11:29 · Exodus 14:10-12 · Exodus 14:31

Exodus 14:22→leads to1 Corinthians 10:1-4

"The children of Israel went into the middle of the sea on the dry ground" (14:22), with the pillar of cloud behind them (14:19). Paul writes that "our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea" (1 Corinthians 10:1-2). In the same passage he names Christ, not as the sea but as the rock they drank from: "the rock was Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:4). Of all these things he says, "they were written for our admonition" (1 Corinthians 10:11). Paul calls the crossing a baptism into Moses and an example; he says nothing more about the sea than that.

כָּבֵדkavedsay ka-VED

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "be heavy, weighty, burdensome, honoured", and for this form, with God as subject, "get oneself glory (or honour)". The LORD says it three times here: "I will get honor over Pharaoh" (14:4), "I will get myself honor over Pharaoh" (14:17), and "when I have gotten myself honor over Pharaoh" (14:18). In the plagues the same verb described Pharaoh's heart: "he hardened his heart" (8:15), "Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also" (8:32), "the heart of Pharaoh was stubborn" (9:7), and "he sinned yet more, and hardened his heart" (9:34); and the LORD said, "I have hardened his heart" (10:1). In "they drove them heavily" (14:25), "heavily" is a noun from the same family, kevedut, which Brown-Driver-Briggs defines "heaviness"; it appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.

Hemmed in by the sea, the people said it would have been better to serve the Egyptians (14:12). When has going back to what you knew looked safer than going where God was leading?