Several days had elapsed since the Israelites started on their flight. Pharaoh already missed them. His important works were brought to a standstill; there was no one to make or handle bricks, and the loss of so large and so efficient a body of workers was severely felt. A reaction takes place in the mind of the king; he charges himself with folly in letting the people go, and resolves to pursue them. He learns, also, that they have not yet got out of the land of Egypt, and he thinks that by the fact that they have turned south, and not gone directly to the east, they are confused, and he plans to catch them when they are hemmed in by the mountains and the sea. With six hundred of his swiftest chariots he at once sets out after them, leaving orders, doubtless, for other chariots as well as foot soldiers to follow as soon as possible. The Israelites were in the greatest alarm; there was no visible means of escape. They could go no further south, for the mountains were in front of them; they could not turn to the right for the same reason; the Egyptians were in their rear, and the Red Sea was before them. They were in a trap. This is what Pharaoh expected. The strategy on which he had reckoned (ver. 3) had worked admirably. THE PRESENT HELP IN TROUBLE. “And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them: “And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel: and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night.” It is singular that this blind king should so soon forget that there was a God in Israel, and that he was to come into collision again with that Being who had so often foiled, and finally, in the death of the first-born, had utterly crushed him. But none are so blind or so heedless as the obstinate and the unbelieving. It will be seen that the battle that is soon to follow will end as before--in the defeat of Pharaoh, and, as some think, his death. We have in this “angel of God” the same being that we have met so often before, who talked familiarly with Abraham and Jacob. He is the one who afterward came in the form of the flesh, and is called Christ. This time His symbol was a cloud, and at night a pillar of fire. In such a large host as that of the children of Israel were at this time, it would be necessary that there be some elevated central object, so that those of the people scattered widely, in caring for the flocks and other like services, should not lose the location of the camp. Some such arrangement was early found important in caravans crossing the deserts, so that it was customary to carry a round grate with fire, held aloft on a pole. The ancient Persians and some other nations carried a sacred fire in silver altars before their armies.