Yam Suph (Hebrew: יַם-סוּף) is a phrase which occurs about 23 times in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible/Old Testament) and has traditionally been understood to refer to the salt water inlet located between Africa and the Arabian peninsula, known in English as the Red Sea. More recently, alternate western scholarly understandings of the term have been proposed for those passages where it refers to the Israelite Crossing of the Sea as told in Exodus 13-15. These proposals would mean that Yam Suph is better translated in these passages as Sea of Reeds or Sea of Seaweed; see Egyptian reed fields, also described as the ka of the Nile Delta. In Jewish sources I Kings 9:26 "yam suph" is translated as Sea of Reeds at Eilat on the Gulf of Eilat.
In the Biblical narrative of The Exodus the phrase Yam Suph refers to the body of water that the Israelites crossed following their exodus from Egypt. The appropriate translation of the phrase remains a matter of dispute, as does the exact location referred to. One possible translation of Yam Suph is "Sea of Reeds", (suph by itself means 'reed', e.g. in Exodus 2:3). This was pointed out as early as the 11th century, by Rashi.
This may refer to a large lake close to the Red Sea, which has since dried up due to the Suez Canal. It was in Egypt, specifically in the Suez valley next to the Sinai Peninsula, and north of the Gulf of Suez. It could also be the Gulf of Eilat, to which is referred in the Books of Kings (I Kings 9:26). The Lake of Tanis, a former coastal lagoon fed by the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, has also been advanced as the place Moses parted the waters. Heinrich Brugsch suggests that the Reed Sea is Sabḫat al Bardawīl, a large lagoon on the north coast of the Sinai Peninsula.
More conjecturally, it has also been suggested that suph may be related to the Hebrew suphah ("storm") or soph ("end"), referring to the events of the Reed/Red Sea escape itself:
The crossing of the sea signaled the end of the sojourn in Egypt and it certainly was the end of the Egyptian army that pursued the fleeing Hebrews (Ex 14:23-29; 15:4-5). After this event at yam suph, perhaps the verb soph, meaning "destroy" and "come to an end," originated (cf. Amos 3:15; Jer 8:13; Isa 66:17; Psa 73:19). Another possible development of this root is the word suphah, meaning "storm-wind"...The meanings "end" and "storm-wind" would have constituted nice puns on the event that took place at the yam suph.
Read more about Yam Suph: Occurrences