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And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians and it shall come to pass that when you go You will not go empty But every woman it’s every Jewish woman shall borrow of her neighbor and of her that sojourneth in her house jewels of silver and jewels of gold and raiment and ye shall put them upon your sons and upon your daughters and ye shall Spoil the Egyptians so over to you Jonathan you talked about the importance of that motif I think it’s very important at least to understand it narratively because This I think is an answer to the big discussion we had about asking the the women to kill their children There is a sense in which the Pharaoh wants to reduce the Israelites to potential that he can rule over and then what we see Now is a kind of a flip okay an inversion where in fact Egypt will now become that which will provide potential to Israel as it leaves and it and it puts things in the right order at least narratively in the scripture puts it in the Right order because this is difficult for some people to understand that Egypt is a is a son of Ham Egypt is a is a son of the curse. He’s an outsider you would say he’s one of those that has been ejected like Cain ejected from the world and acts in a way as a kind of strange Stranger, but also potential in which we can increase ourselves And this is where you see that actually happening and some of the Church Fathers they explicitly talk about this as being the manner in which Christians or believers can incorporate things from strange lands that can incorporate Greek Greek Thinking or even just some poetry from other cultures or from your own our own ancient culture that you can spoil the Egyptians That it is possible to to bring some things in if it’s done To bring riches in from the past and from other cultures as long as it’s done in the proper in the proper order that it doesn’t So would it be in some sense because God in this story is the spirit that’s calling the Israelites To freedom that if you bring in the treasures in the service of the proper good Then that becomes acceptable and then James over to you because well This is really just a footnote to what Jonathan’s put so so beautifully just just now This motif of despoiling the Egyptians stealing from the Egyptians if we first see it and I think origin of Alexandria This is the just end of the second century third century Augustine uses the idea as well He probably probably wasn’t aware of of origin It becomes what is actually quite a challenging verse this sort of instruction to steal particularly in light of the Long exactly right. It’s it’s it’s a troubling troubling verse, but it becomes a really central idea This this claim that that as Douglas was talking about yesterday that you can your license to explore pagan philosophy and to take pagan ideas to to sift through these ideas as Abrahamic monotheism was so good at drawing in Hellenic ideas without being overwhelmed by them And we can see even we talked about yesterday I just 314 this this very pregnant philosophical metaphysical idea that I am I am that I am God God’s being and His existence his essence and his existence coming together in one Augustine says it’s obvious that Plato Must have read the books of the books of Moses when he’s writing about The myth of the cave and he’s writing about objective transcendent reality and so on this becomes a really important idea particularly in the second half of the first millennium as we move into late antiquity after the collapse of Rome you have the emergence of The monasteries particularly on Benedict in 529 onwards the founding of the famous monastery Monte Monte casino and there the idea is that you know the monks preserve Not just Christian scriptures and Christian texts, but also pagan ones as well So in many ways it’s this idea that it’s okay to take Pagan wisdom and to preserve it into and to cherish it to nurture it that this sort of verse Licenses and it’s I think I just want to say one more thing It’s important because we might think of this is just an allegorical Flurry that this is just some kind of thing you put into text, but we have to notice that Very soon that goal that the Egyptians have given the Israelites will be used to first make the golden calf And then later used to make the ornaments of the tabernacle and so you can see exactly the potential that is taken from Egypt Is now shown to be either Corrupting if it’s in the wrong order to make the idols of the pagan idols or then ultimately in service of God in order to make the ornaments of the tabernacle so Just two quick observations on that one of them is I’m struck again and again by the revolutionary role of women Constantly through Exodus like the women keep saving the day right whether it’s the midwives whether it’s the Pharaoh’s daughter or here like why would these women be the ones who are charged with going into the households and doing it and so Well, one of the best predictors of economic development in the developing world is the freedom and rights associated with women and there’s a mythological Similarity between women and That the foreign in some sense and so what you might say is that to the degree that a society is capable of The patriarchs in a society are capable of attending to and valuing their own women who are other They’re capable of valuing the other as such and it’s again it speaks to security Right to the the lack of need to control women right speaks to masculine security is one aspect But the other thing that struck me is is that the empathy here? Because empathy is an argument that is that it let’s say it’s that it’s ascendant in certain ways in the contemporary culture that might feel like in ways that are Slightly corrupted but empathy used to true end can lead to change in evolution and revolutionary thinking and revolution And that comes in through them and the strength of the women here is really remarkable because they do a whole bunch of things for No reason that kind of makes any sense politically based on the basis of that Like the great feminine power the other thing I was going to say about the gold you’re talking about Jonathan the ways that the gold is Appropriated you know nobody ever says where they get their weapons when they finally have the weapons And so it’s like I think that it’s either two options if I’m looking at this as a thriller writer I mean one of it is that this gold and silver is forged into weapons that is taken from here You know or maybe they pulled it off the washed up bodies of the Egyptian right, but there’s the same idea right so so either way It’s appropriated right it’s forged into not just the the messaging the tabernacle of God But also the forcefulness has to come in some ways from materials from the Egyptians There’s another side of this I think is let’s call it Psychological in a certain sense I think what these first three chapters have done for us is really sort of set out the whole Drama of the human soul like the whole the whole drama of the spiritual life, and you start in oppression and alienation Unable to get out of it yourself longing for resolution for homecoming for the for the promised land And you can’t get there and so in a way I think the story this Exodus is of course precisely about God’s work in moving us from from exile and from oppression to To homecoming and resolution and nourishment But I think there’s a there’s a side to this that is present in the the spoiling of the Egyptians That’s also psychological and that is within that that drama of of redemption or let’s say or salvation There’s you know it’s not It’s not like Salvation it could be real true salvation if we forgot about everything we were before and You know if somehow our sins and our sufferings our toils and tribulations That define us is like this day today who I am and have been and we all carry these things with us Certainly I am today in any day if those are somehow not part of where you end up in your resolution Then it’s not you that is saved and so there’s a sense in which I think this is at least metaphorically the the the jewels of the Egyptians are a way of saying that this time of oppression and slavery Will yet be turned into the promised land