Your ShelfYour Projects

Did the Israelites Lie to the Egyptians?

17%

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 15, 1865

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 26, No. 11.

Read the full edition

Did the Israelites Lie to the Egyptians?

By Dudley Marvin Canright

In Ex. xii, 35, 36, it is said that the children of Israel "borrowed of the Egyptians, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment. And they spoiled the Egyptians." Infidels say that this was lying and deception; and since it was done by the command of God, it reflects dishonor upon his character.
Josephus, the Jewish historian, in his Antiquities B. ii, Chap. xiv, Sect. 6, speaks of this event thus: "Accordingly Pharaoh called for Moses, and bid them begone; as supposing, that if once the Hebrews were gone out of the country, Egypt should be freed from its miseries. They also honored the Hebrews with gifts; some, in order to get them to depart quickly, and others on account of their neighborhood, and the friendship they had with them."
In a foot note on this, Wm. Whiston A. M., says: "These large presents made to the Israelites, of vessels of silver, and vessels of gold, and raiment, were, as Josephus truly calls them, gifts really given them; not lent them, as our English falsely renders them. They were spoils required, not borrowed of them. Gen. xv, 14; Ex. iii, 22; xi, 2; Ps. cv, 37; as the same version falsely renders the Hebrew word here used. Ex. xii, 35, 36. God had ordered them to demand these as their pay and reward, during their long and bitter slavery in Egypt, as atonements for the lives of the Egyptians, and as the condition of the Jew's departure, and of the Egyptians' deliverance from these terrible judgments, which had they not now ceased, they had soon been all dead men, as they themselves confess. Chap. xii, 33. Nor was there any sense in borrowing or lending, when the Israelites were finally departing out of the land forever."
This seems to be the truth of the matter; and it fairly clears the Hebrews from the charge of dishonesty, and God from the imputation of encouraging deception.
D. M. Canright.