A CORRESPONDENT wishes an answer to the following question : "If it was right for the Children of Israel to wear jewelry, (see Ex. iii, 22; xi, 2; xii, 35,) is it not right for christians of the present day to wear it?"
Answer. We have no evidence that God designed that the Children of Israel should wear the jewelry which they took from the Egyptians. Concerning the justice of this transaction between the Israelites and the Egyptians, we presume no doubt is entertained. Two reasons may be offered why God should command them to take this booty, and why they should do it:
1. The whole body of the Israelites, say 600,000 working men, had performed hard service for the Egyptians for many years, without any remuneration. Something was their due. Hence God instructs them to demand jewels of gold and silver. The term rendered "borrow," Dr. Clarke says is very improperly translated. It should be ask or demand. And so the infidel's charge against the God of the Bible for causing his people to borrow from the Egyptians under pretense of returning it to them again, when he knew they never would, falls to the ground. The people were about to leave the land, and they probably asked or demanded some remuneration for their services; and the Lord gave them favor in the sight of the Egyptians, and they gave them such things as they required. But had an accurate account been rendered, the Egyptians would probably have found themselves in long arrears to the Israelites when they left the land.
2. This very gold, &c., which they took from the Egyptians, would be wanted in a few months afterwards in the construction of the Sanctuary, to which we find it was liberally contributed, Ex. xxxv, 22.
We have said that we have no evidence that God designed that they should wear the jewels taken from the Egyptians. It is true the women had got on some earrings; Ex. xxxii, 2, 3; and it is also true that the people made a golden calf; and perhaps they were only exchanging one sin for another more heinous, when they took the gold from their ears, and transferred it to a golden calf. At any rate the example of a people so easily given to idolatry, must be considered a questionable pattern for christians to follow in all particulars.
But suppose people were permitted to wear jewelry in those ancient days, when, on account of the hardness of their hearts and the ignorance of the times, there were many things that God winked at, [Matt. xix, 8; Acts xvii, 30,] how shall this affect us? Another dispensation has dawned upon the world since then; and we are to inquire what new facts its light reveals to us, and how far its precepts curtail the indulgences of the old. Now two apostles have direct testimony on the question at issue. First, Paul. 1 Tim. ii, 8, 9. "I will . . . that women adorn themselves in modest apparel with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with broidered hair, or gold or pearls or costly array." Second, Peter. 1 Epis. iii, 3. "Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel."
When these apostles tell the women that their adorning should not be the wearing of gold, &c., they certainly do not mean that it should be. So far as their testimony is believed and received, no comment of ours can be necessary.