Way back in Genesis 15, when Abraham was still known as Abram, God tells him what will happen to all those ancestors that God promised him. They will go to a land that is “not theirs,” live for 400 years as slaves, but will eventually return back to the promised land. For good measure, God says He will “judge” the nation that enslaved them.
Oh, and one more thing. When they return, they’ll do so with “many possessions” (Genesis 15:14).
This paints a slightly different picture of the Exodus than the one we’re traditionally given. For most of my life, I always considered the Exodus to be a panic-stricken escape in the dead of night, a “flight for your life” type of moment. That mentality was no doubt aided by the fact that as soon as the Israelites left, the Egyptians pursued them with their chariots.
That’s not really the case at all. Yes, they did flee in the middle of the night, but they didn’t do so out of fear – they did so because the Egyptians drove them out.
When God tells Moses to talk to Pharaoh, He tells Moses that when they leave, they’ll “plunder the Egyptians.” For someone like Moses, who, at least at one point had designs on liberating the Israelites, that must’ve been music to his ears.
But how is that possible? We associate the word plunder with burglary and deception. God can’t possibly be condoning theft, can He?
Exodus 12:35-36 clarifies what actually happens during the Exodus itself. As it turns out, the Israelites asked the Egyptians for goods, and the Egyptians freely gave them gold, silver, and clothing.
Why? Simply put, because the Egyptians were sick of the Israelites, the plagues, and their God who sent them. By the time you get to Exodus 12, ten different plagues had devastated the land, culminating in the worst one: the death of the firstborn. After that, the Egyptians wanted nothing to do with Israel.
It’s thought that it was these very possessions that were used during the construction of the Tabernacle. If so, then the “plundering of the Egyptians” is less about making the nation of Israel rich, but more about giving them the tools they needed to worship God in the wilderness.