Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man request of his neighbor, and every woman of her neighbor, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold.
All Commentaries on Exodus 11:2 Go To Exodus 11
Gregory the Theologian
AD 390
What say you? Thus it has pleased him that you should come forth out of Egypt, the iron furnace; that you should leave behind the idolatry of that country and be led by Moses and his lawgiving and martial rule. I give you a piece of advice which is not my own, or rather which is very much my own, if you consider the matter spiritually. Borrow from the Egyptians vessels of gold and silver. With these take your journey. Supply yourself for the road with the goods of strangers, or rather with your own. There is money owing to you, the wages of your bondage and of your brick making. Be clever on your side too in asking retribution. Be an honest robber. You did suffer wrong there while you were fighting with the clay (that is, this troublesome and filthy body) and were building cities foreign and unsafe, whose memorial perishes with a cry. What then? Do you come out for nothing and without wages? But why will you leave to the Egyptians and to the powers of your adversaries that which they have gained by wickedness and will spend with yet greater wickedness? It does not belong to them. They have ravished it and have sacrilegiously taken it as plunder from him who says, “The silver is mine and the gold is mine, and I give it to whom I will.” Yesterday it was theirs, for it was permitted to be so. Today the master takes it and gives it to you that you may make a good and saving use of it. Let us make to ourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when we fail, they may receive us in the time of judgment.
