The night of the fourteenth day of the first month was one to be long and gratefully remembered. Little sleep was there in the homes of Israel or in the dwellings of Egypt on that eventful night. The feast of the Paschal Lamb beginning with the early evening; the dread visitation upon Egypt of the angel of death at midnight; the hasty preparation for their journey throughout all the families of the children of Israel; the gathering and mustering of their hosts for the march of the next day:――such was the work of that memorable night. The stages of their march are definitely chronicled; one day from Rameses to Succoth (Ex. 12: 37); another day from Succoth to Etham, “in the edge of the wilderness” (Ex. 13: 20); another from Etham to Pi-hahiroth between Migdol and the Sea over against Baal-zephon (Ex. 14: 2). The same stages appear in the official record (Num. 33: 3–8) in which it is added that “Israel went out with a high hand in the sight of all the Egyptians, for the Egyptians buried all their first-born whom the Lord had smitten among them; upon the gods also, the Lord executed judgment”[33]――so that the shock of such and so much death and their funeral services for the dead diverted their attention from Israel and detained them from the pursuit for a season, giving the slow moving hosts of Israel time to reach the Red Sea before Pharaoh’s swift chariots could overtake them. _The guiding Pillar of cloud and fire._ At this stage commenced that striking but most precious manifestation of God’s guiding presence, of which the first record is――“And the Lord went before them in a pillar of a cloud to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light; to go by day and night. He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people” (Ex. 13: 21, 22). If the order of the narration corresponds in time to the order of the events, this manifestation of the pillar commenced on the second day of their march as they moved from Succoth to Etham “in the edge of the wilderness.” All through those otherwise dreary days of their marching and halting for forty years in the wilderness, this pillar was before them, appearing as a pillar of cloud by day but of fire by night――the symbol of Jehovah’s presence in all their way, leading their path as they journeyed; marking their place of rest where they were to halt and pitch their tents.――――Subsequent allusions to this pillar of cloud or of fire are somewhat numerous, _e. g._ Ex. 29: 43――showing that _in_ this pillar God met his people and sanctified the tabernacle with his glory: Ex. 40: 34–38, setting forth that when the tabernacle was in readiness, the cloud covered it and the glory of the Lord filled the most holy place, making that henceforth his special locality. Yet the pillar of cloud was lifted above the tabernacle as the signal for striking tents and moving forward. Its service as the signal