Exodus 14:1-2 Then the Lord said to Moses,"Tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp near Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. They are to encamp by the sea, directly opposite Baal Zephon. (Earlier, Pharaoh had given the Israelites permission to gather their families and possessions and go out to the desert to worship their God. In fact, he had commanded Moses to take the people and leave. Rather than the Lord leading Moses and His people in a northeasterly direction which would have taken them straight up through the land of the Philistines against whom they were not ready or equipped to battle, the Lord led their departure from the Goshen in a southern direction. The Israelites' first encampment was due south at Succoth, a name that means tabernacle, a message and reminder for them that the Lord had chosen to dwell with them. Then they continued south until they came near the end of the southern-reaching land mass that separates the two northern-reaching inlet fingers of the Red Sea, at which point they turned northward again to camp at their second campsite at Etham, a name that means a complete fortification that shuts you in. Their current situation seems promising. Though they are in the desert, still in the Egyptian desert, they are finally heading northward again toward the Land of Promise when...suddenly...in an oddly surprising directive, the Lord instructs them to turn back south, away from their promised destination. Commentators indicate, though some of these sites cannot be located with certainty today, they likely describe a place where the sea is to the people's east and further south, where a closer mountainous wall is to their west, and where an open vulnerability to their former oppressors lies to their north, the direction from which God's people had just come. The lesson for us in these name places of encampment is that the Lord leads us today on our life journey out of our Goshen district of Egypt and takes us to a place where He tabernacles us in shelter, where He places a fortification around us that shuts us in, and finally, that He Himself may place us in situations that make us vulnerable to the forces that oppress us, but which are only the staging point from which He is about to show Himself strong on our behalf because the crossing of the Red Sea and our deliverance though unknown yet to us at this point, or to the Israelites then, is at hand.)
