What Does Exodus 14:6 Mean?

So he made ready his chariot and took his army with him. The preparation-for-pursuit verse is brief and militarily matter-of-fact: chariot readied, army assembled. The simplicity of the two actions (chariot + army) before the massive pursuit description of verse 7 creates a sense of inevitable escalation.

Pharaoh's personal "made ready his chariot" is the king taking direct command of the pursuit: this is not a delegated military action but Pharaoh personally leading his forces. The same Pharaoh who threatened Moses with death (Exodus 10:28) and who begged Israel to leave at midnight (Exodus 12:31) is now personally leading the army to recapture Israel.

The chariot as the first-mentioned military implement is the ancient Near Eastern equivalent of modern armor: the chariot corps was Egypt's premier offensive weapon, the decisive military technology of the Late Bronze Age. Egypt's chariots were feared across the ancient Near East; their deployment against the recently-enslaved Israelite multitude (which is described in Exodus 13:18 as "equipped for battle" but not as a chariot force) is massively asymmetric. The chariot force pursuing the on-foot Israelite multitude is the human-military context that makes the sea crossing's outcome so impossible from any natural military perspective.

The readying of the chariot is also the beginning of the sea crossing's irony trajectory: Egypt's most powerful military technology, the weapon that won and maintained Egypt's empire, will be the weapon that drowns at the sea. The "chariots and horsemen" of verse 9 and 23 become "the chariots and the horseman of Pharaoh" that YHWH threw into the sea (Exodus 15:4). The chariot that Pharaoh readied in verse 6 ends its journey at the bottom of the sea in Exodus 15:4-5. The preparation for pursuit is the preparation for destruction.