Spoils of Egypt

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.

“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