And the LORD said to Moses, “I will bring but one more plague upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt; after that he shall let you go from here; indeed, when he lets you go, he will drive you out of here one and all. Tell the people to borrow, each man from his neighbor and each woman from hers, objects of silver and gold.”
The Israelites had done Moses’ bidding and borrowed from the Egyptians objects of silver and gold, and clothing. And the LORD had disposed the Egyptians favorably toward the people, and they let them have their request; thus they stripped the Egyptians.
This shall be My name forever,
This My appellation for all eternity. (16) “Go and assemble the elders of Israel and say to them: the LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has appeared to me and said, ‘I have taken note of you and of what is being done to you in Egypt, (17) and I have declared: I will take you out of the misery of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, to a land flowing with milk and honey.’ (18) They will listen to you; then you shall go with the elders of Israel to the king of Egypt and you shall say to him, ‘The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, manifested Himself to us. Now therefore, let us go a distance of three days into the wilderness to sacrifice to the LORD our God.’ (19) Yet I know that the king of Egypt will let you go only because of a greater might. (20) So I will stretch out My hand and smite Egypt with various wonders which I will work upon them; after that he shall let you go. (21) And I will dispose the Egyptians favorably toward this people, so that when you go, you will not go away empty-handed. (22) Each woman shall borrow from her neighbor and the lodger in her house objects of silver and gold, and clothing, and you shall put these on your sons and daughters, thus stripping the Egyptians.”
Josephus' Antiquities 2.14
The Egyptians honored them with these gifts, in order to hasten their departure. Others gave out of good neighborliness and friendship they had for them. When they went forth from Egypt the Egyptians wept and had remorse for how they treated them.
Requesting
Achsa wants land (Josh 15:16, Judg 1:14)
וַתְּסִיתֵהוּ לִשְׁאוֹל מֵאֵת אָבִיהָ שָׂדֶה
She (Achsa) induced him (Othniel) to ask her father (Caleb) for some property.
Sisera asks Yael for water (Judg 5:25)
מַיִם שָׁאַל חָלָב נָתָנָה
He asked for water she gave him milk.
Gideon asks for jewelry (Judg 8:24)
וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵהֶם גִּדְעוֹן אֶשְׁאֲלָה מִכֶּם שְׁאֵלָה וּתְנוּ לִי אִישׁ נֶזֶם שְׁלָלוֹ
And Gideon said to them, "I have a request to make of you: Each of you give me the earring he received as booty."
Starving children (Lam 4:4)
עוֹלָלִים שָׁאֲלוּ לֶחֶם
Little children ask for bread
Borrowing
A borrower loses an object (Exod 22:13)
וְכִי יִשְׁאַל אִישׁ מֵעִם רֵעֵהוּ וְנִשְׁבַּר אוֹ מֵת
When a man borrows an animal from another and it dies or is injured
Elisha tells a woman to borrow jugs (2 Kings 4:3)
וַיֹּאמֶר לְכִי שַׁאֲלִי לָךְ כֵּלִים מִן הַחוּץ מֵאֵת כָּל (שכנכי) [שְׁכֵנָיִךְ]
"Go," he said, "and borrow vessels outside, from all your neighbors, empty vessels, as many as you can.”
This list of quotes was taken from Prof Leonard Greenspoon's article "Despoiling the Egyptians" on www.thetorah.com
[KJV] translates, “every woman shall borrow of her neighbour.” This translation is thoroughly mischievous and misleading. If there was any borrowing, it was on the part of the Egyptians, who had been taking the labour of the Israelites without recompense…. In modern times, enemies of the Bible vie with one another in finding terms strong enough in which to condemn the “deceit” practised on the Egyptians.
Chief Rabbi J.H. Hertz
"During much of the nineteenth century, British Jews were seeking social and civic equality; the Jewish community also was engaged in internal and institutional developments of its own. Thus, these Jewish translators were especially concerned to remove from their English versions (since they could not change the Hebrew text) any expression that would suggest character flaws on the part of biblical personages and their Anglo-Jewish descendants.
What was at stake, in the view of these translators, was the safety, perhaps even the survival, of their fellow Jews in a society in which they still labored under many social and legal impediments. In the hands of their enemies, a shifty Jacob of the Bible could easily foreshadow a shiftless Jacob from London’s East End, and Israelites who pretended to borrow from the Egyptians with no intention of repaying could become blood-sucking moneylenders.[11]
We may therefore conclude that a relatively innocuous biblical reference loomed larger than we might have expected for British Jews a hundred and fifty years or more ago."
"Despoiling the Egyptians: A Concerning Jewish Legacy?" by Professor Leonard Greenspoon, on www.thetorah.com
Shadal (Samuel David Luzatto 1800-1865
There is no doubt that this was an act of trickery, for [the Israelites] did not say to the Egyptians that they would never return but that they were going for three days and then coming back.
22. each woman will ask of her neighbor and of the sojourner.
Both "neighbor" and "sojourner" are feminine nouns. The verse reflects a frequent social phenomenon - also registered in the rabbinic literature of Late Antiquity - in which women constitute the porous boundary between adjacent ethnic communities: borrowers of the proverbial cup of sugar, sharers of gossip and women's lore... Some readers felt discomfot at the the act of exploitation recorded here. The most common line of defense is that this restitution for unpaid labor exacted from the Hebrew slaves. In any case, it seems wise not to view the story in terms of intergroup ethics. From beginning to end, it is a tale of Israelite triumphalism. The denizens of the simple farms and the relatively crude farms of Judah would have known about Imperial Egypt's fabulous luxuries, its exquisite jewellery, and the affluent among them would have enjoyed imported Egyptian linens and papyrus. It is easy to imagine how this tale of despoiling or stripping bare Egypt would have given pleasure to its early audiences. In each of the three sister-wife stories in Genesis that adumbrate the Exodus narrative, the patriarch and his wife depart loaded with gifts: the presence of that motif suggest that the despoiling of Egypt was an essential part of the story of the liberation from bondage in the early tradition.
Robert Alter: Commentary on The Hebrew Bible, Genesis 3:22
Rabbi Yehuda Appel (Aish HaTorah), "Taking Gold and Silver from the Egyptians"
In the aftermath of World War II, Germany offered to pay reparations to victims of the Nazi regime. This offer was met by an incredibly heated debate in Israel. In fact, the controversy was so great that there was actually speculation in the Israeli media that acceptance of the reparations would cause a civil war.
When Prime Minister Ben Gurion ultimately agreed to accept the reparations, riots took place and there was a march on the Knesset which resulted in the Knesset building being stoned. Though peace and order was eventually restored, it is clear that for many Israelis at the time it was despicable to think that any "blood money" should be accepted.
[Appel discusses the Rashi and the Midrash from Sanhedrin, above]
But this brings us to the second question: If the Jews had legitimate claims to Egyptian wealth, then why did Moses have to encourage them to take it?
One explanation is that the Israelites were so anxious to escape the misery of Egypt, that they didn't want to stay around in order to enrich themselves. When a person is in great pain, his focus is exclusively on ending that suffering - and not on the acquisition of wealth.Furthermore, the Israelites feared that such an action could provoke their former masters into pursuing them, as they made their way out of the Nile Kingdom.
Oznaim L'Torah, a modern commentator, offers a very different explanation. As victims of two centuries of unspeakable horrors, the Jews simply abhorred having contact with anything connected to Egypt.
Additionally, they did not want their seizure of Egypt's wealth to be seen as some type of "quid pro" for all the suffering they had endured. Thus Moses had to encourage them to take this property - in order to fulfill the Almighty's promise to Abraham.
This reluctance to take any money from the hands of their murderous exploiters is an issue that was tragically duplicated by the Jews in Europe some three millennia later.
You shall go to your fathers in peace;
You shall be buried at a ripe old age. And they shall return here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
none among their tribes faltered. Egypt rejoiced when they left,
for dread of Israel had fallen upon them.
“This loss of possessions has been a blight that has dogged Jews throughout their expulsions, from Spain in 1492 to Iraq in the first years of the State of Israel. But in all these cases, their neighbors were not so kind as to let them have silver and gold articles in return for the wealth they had left behind, and not even on loan, at that.”
Nechama Leibowitz
Special Dispatch - Egypt August 22, 2003 No. 556 (Translated from Arabic Language Sources)
Egyptian Jurists to Sue 'The Jews' for Compensation for 'Trillions' of Tons of Gold Allegedly Stolen During Exodus from Egypt
The August 9, 2003 edition of the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram Al-Arabi featured an interview with Dr. Nabil Hilmi, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Al-Zaqaziq who, together with a group of Egyptian expatriates in Switzerland, is preparing an enormous lawsuit against "all the Jews of the world." The following are excerpts from the interview:
Dr. Hilmi: "... Since the Jews make various demands of the Arabs and the world, and claim rights that they base on historical and religious sources, a group of Egyptians in Switzerland has opened the case of the so-called 'great exodus of the Jews from Pharaonic Egypt.' At that time, they stole from the Pharaonic Egyptians gold, jewelry, cooking utensils, silver ornaments, clothing, and more, leaving Egypt in the middle of the night with all this wealth, which today is priceless."
Commentators quoted:
Josephus - Roman Jewish historian and military leader
Rashi - 11th century France
Rashbam - 12th century France (Rashi's grandson)
Ibn Ezra - 12th century Spain
Daat Zekeinim - compendium of 12/13th century commentators from France and Germany
Chizkuni - 13th century France
Sfornon - 16th century Italy
Shadal - 19th century Italy
JH Hertz - UK Chief Rabbi 1913-1945
Nechaman Leibowitz - 20th century
All others quoted are contemporary