Jacob Chanikuzhy

D.D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States wrote, “If you want total security, go to prison. There you are fed, clothed, given medical care and so on…The only thing lacking is freedom.” Nobody in the good senses will exchange one’s freedom for anything in the world. The opposite is rather true. We will forgo anything for freedom. The people of Israel were no different. They were ready to leave Egypt without asking for the wages of their labour.

But something very interesting or even surprising happened in connection with the escape of the Israelites from Egypt. God asked Moses to tell the people to borrow jewellery from their neighbours before leaving Egypt (Exodus 11:1-3). According to the Samaritan Pentateuch the Israelites were told to ask not only for jewellery but also clothes and golden and silver vessels from their Egyptian neighbours. They borrowed all these under the pretext of going for worship. More surprisingly, the Egyptians were not at all sceptical about the apparently “organized” move of Israelites to borrow their valuables.

Could the above mentioned scenario have happened historically? Some scholars think that it was not an instance of decent borrowing but a kind of plundering. That means, the slaves who ran away from Egypt might have seized everything they could get hold of. However, in the biblical narrative, the people lent their golden and silver ornaments because they wanted to get rid of the Israelites at any cost. The Egyptians were finally happy that the Israelites left although it meant loosing some of their valuables. According to the author of Exodus, the Egyptians were brought to this mind-set through the last plague that God brought on the Egyptians – the death of the first born.

It is curious to note that the bible does not describe how God brought about the death of the first-born of the humans and animals in Egypt. It was a work done in the darkness of the midnight and it was hidden from both the Egyptians and the Israelites. But, this divine act has brought Pharaoh to his knees. With this final strike, God changed or interchanged the prevailing situation of the Egyptians and the Israelites. Hitherto the Egyptians were oppressing the Israelites and the Israelites were a crying people. Now, with the final blow of death in the Egyptian homes, a great cry arose. In a single night Egypt felt itself an oppressed people and became a crying nation. The fearsome Egypt now became fearful of Moses and his powerful God and His people. This way Israel also came to know that God has His plans to do justice in a hopelessly unjust situation.

Though Israel wanted only to escape exploiting the vulnerability of the Egyptians, God wanted more for Israel. After doing servile job in Egypt for generations, God did not want Israel to leave Egypt as destitutes. Egypt was bound to pay decent wages for the hard labour of Israelite slaves. So, God created a situation in which the Egyptians were forced to pay the Israelites in kind. By doing this, God was not extorting anything from the Egyptians in favour of His own people. Later Israelite legal system itself has stipulated the rights of Jewish slaves in the Israelite community. Accordingly, when a slave master frees his slave, he has to give him generous gifts from his financial resources so that the slave can begin a dignified life as a free man. In order to start living as a free man in the mainstream of the society, the freed slave must have money to buy land, build house, buy clothes, cultivate crops, and to take care of the family. According to the Israelite law, it was the obligation of the slave owner to support his slave to start a life proper to the dignity of a respectable person (Dt 15:12-18). And in the opinion some scholars it is to give a solid foundation to this particular Israelite law regarding the rights of the slaves, that the story of Egyptians giving gold and silver to the Israelites slaves was inserted in the Exodus story.

The story of God rescuing Sarai from the harem of Pharaoh, and Abram and Sarai leaving Egypt with huge wealth, and the story of Jacob returning from the tyranny of his uncle Laban as a rich man, and the story of Israelites leaving Egypt with the wealth of their masters, all teach an unforgettable biblical lesson: God intervenes in mysterious ways to do justice for His people in their helplessness, and God frees His people with a mighty hand when they are entrapped and exploited by insolent rulers, and God reinstates the rights of the oppressed and exalts them to the complete bewilderment of their foes!