were festal vessels with which the Egyptians furnished the poor Israelites for the intended feast,” and even if “the Israelites had their thoughts directed with all seriousness to the feast which they were about to celebrate to Jehovah in the desert” (Baumgarten); their request to the Egyptians cannot have referred to any borrowing, nor have presupposed any intention to restore what they received on their return. From the very first the Israelites asked without intending to restore, and the Egyptians granted their request without any hope of receiving back, because God had made their hearts favourably disposed to the Israelites. The expressions את־מצרים נצּלתּם in Exo 3:22, and וינצּלוּ in Exo 12:36, are not at variance with this, but rather require it. For נצל does not mean to purloin, to steal, to take away secretly by cunning and fraud, but to plunder (2Ch 20:25), as both the lxx (σκυλεύειν) and Vulgate (spoliare) have rendered it. Rosenmüller, therefore, is correct in his explanation: “Et spoliabitis Aegyptios, ita ut ab Aegyptiis, qui vos tam dura servitute oppresserunt, spolia auferetis.” So also is Hengstenberg, who says, “The author represents the Israelites as going forth, laden as it were with the spoils of their formidable enemy, trophies of the victory which God's power had bestowed on their weakness. While he represents the gifts of the Egyptians as spoils which God had distributed to His host (as Israel is called in Exo 12:41), he leads us to observe that the bestowment of these gifts, which outwardly appeared to be the effect of the good-will of the Egyptians, if viewed more deeply, proceeded from another Giver; that the outwardly free act of the Egyptians was effected by an inward divine constraint which they could not withstand” (Dissertations, vol. ii. p. 431). - Egypt had spoiled Israel by the tributary labour so unjustly enforced, and now Israel carried off the spoil of Egypt-a prelude to the victory which the people of God will one day obtain in their conflict with the power of the world (cf. Zec 14:14).
Chap. 4
Verse 1
Exo 1:1-9 Moses now started a fresh difficulty: the Israelites would not believe that Jehovah had appeared to him. There was so far a reason for this difficulty, that from the time of Jacob-an interval, therefore, of 430 years - God had never appeared to any Israelite. God therefore removed it by giving him three signs by which he might attest his divine mission to his people. These three signs were intended indeed for the Israelites,
