Without reading any of this let me set out my theories. I have been researching volcanoes and Egypt for a few years. Pillar of Fire by night, pillar of smoke by day. Sounds like a volcano to me. Too major volcanic events—Thera/Santorini, perhaps 1625; Mt. Etna around 1500 give or take 50 years. Possible ash falls in northern Africa, or further south over the Nile river. Red tide from pfisteria, frogs killed, flies in droves, people have skin infections, and are killed by much dead matter in their drinking water, etc. etc. There are volcanic influences and lava flows in western Saudi Arabia. That is the scientific part. The religious human part is another story for another time. Got to go to bed now.
Without reading any of this let me set out my theories. I have been researching volcanoes and Egypt for a few years.That doesn't take a few years -- there aren't any, or any during historical times, or even anywhere close to it. Same goes for the Sinai and western Arabia. There's no trace of a Theran supereruption in the 2nd m BC sediments, ice cores, etc (or anytime else), either in Egypt or even the Aegean. A large piece of pumice that had been used as a floating serving tray for some New Kingdom pharaoh, originally attributed to Thera, turned out to be from Kos' volcano, and its eruption 100,000 years ago.
I think that it was at my fortieth birthday (1935) that my father gave me as a present the Hebrew book by Bar-Droma, Negeb ("The South"). Busy as I was with medical practice, I did not read the book, and only opened it at a few places and chanced to read that according to somebody's view, Mt. Sinai was a volcano... I read the [1873] pamphlet of Charles Beke (the author of the idea referred to by Bar Droma), who maintained that Mount Sinai was a volcano...Immanuel Velikovsky, How I Arrived at My Concepts