Scarcely had the Hebrew hosts set forth for Goshen before the question of the _route to Canaan_ must be determined. That Canaan was their destination was settled long before. The first call of Abram designated the land of Canaan as the home of his posterity. Every renewal of that original promise specified the country which was given them. Now, for the course of their journey, the route along the south-eastern shore of the Mediterranean through the land of the Philistines was short and direct; but it must have brought them into contact inevitably with those powerful tribes from whom their descendants suffered so much during all the centuries intervening between Joshua and David. Just emerging from a bondage which spanned several generations and which had emasculated them of all national courage and spirit――but slightly trained moreover yet into the moral heroism which comes of living faith in God――they were in no condition to encounter such enemies. The record puts these points briefly: “God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines although that was near, for God said――Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war and they return to Egypt; but God led the people about through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea”[32] (Ex. 13: 17, 18). The long circuitous route is therefore chosen.――――Wheeling suddenly to the right they put their faces squarely toward the Red Sea, beyond which lay the vast Arabian desert. Ultimately they entered Canaan on its Eastern and not its Western side――the quarter most remote from the Philistines.――――In this wilderness route there were great purposes to be accomplished in the moral training and culture of the nation and in the manifestations of the God of their fathers before their eyes. That way lay the passage of the Red Sea which God provided as the burial-place for the proud hosts of Pharaoh: that way lay Sinai――those grand mountain cliffs which God was to shake with his thunders and invest with the smoke and the flame of his glorious presence that the law might be written in letters of fire upon the souls of the whole people: that way lay the long, breadless, waterless route of almost forty years wandering and sojourning in which the Lord fed the people with angels’ food――bread from the lower heavens――the manna of the desert, and with water once and again from smitten rocks, flowing in dry places as a river――that they might learn the power and the love of their God:――that way lay also their long tuition and training into their religious system――a wonderful arrangement of sacrifices and ordinances for which the life-time of a generation was scarcely too long. All these great results and yet others were contemplated and provided for in this choice of the wilderness route as their way to the land of Canaan. _The March and the Pursuit._