This occurred because Pharaoh soon changed his mind. He led his army in heated pursuit of the departing slaves, catching up with them near the Red Sea. The Israelites were trapped between the sea and the Egyptian army. Then Jehovah intervened by opening a way through the Red Sea. Pharaoh should have recognized this as a display of God’s invincible power. Instead, he led his forces headlong after the Israelites—only to drown with his army when God let the sea return to its normal position. The account in Exodus does not say precisely how God performed these feats. We can rightly call them miracles because the deeds and their timing were beyond human control. Certainly such deeds would not be beyond the One who created both the universe and all its laws.—Exodus 14:1-31.

To illustrate, New Scientist reported that two physicists at the University of Tokyo applied an extremely strong magnetic field to a horizontal tube partially filled with water. The water rushed to the ends of the tube, leaving the middle section dry. The phenomenon, discovered in 1994, works because water is weakly diamagnetic, repelled by a magnet. The established phenomenon of water moving from where a magnetic field is very high to where it is lower has been dubbed The Moses Effect. New Scientist noted: “Pushing water around is easy—if you have a big enough magnet. And if you do, then nearly anything is possible.”

Of course, one could not say with absoluteness which process God used when he parted the Red Sea for the Israelites. But the Creator knows in the fullest detail all the laws of nature. He could easily control certain aspects of one law by employing another of the laws that he originated. To humans, the result could seem miraculous, especially if they did not fully grasp the laws involved.