The gold that the Israelites took from Egypt

The worship of the golden calf by Filippino Lippi


Exodus 3 (New International Version)

18 "The elders of Israel will listen to you. Then you and the elders are to go to the king of Egypt and say to him, 'The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three-day journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to the LORD our God.' ¹⁹ But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. ²⁰ So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go.

²¹ "And I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty-handed. ²² Every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing, which you will put on your sons and daughters. And so you will plunder the Egyptians."

The question i shall address here is why did God want the Israelites to ask articles of silver and gold from the Egyptians to be put on the sons and daughters of the Israelites?

The Israelites had sojourned for some 400 years in the land of Egypt. They came there as guests but were made to slaves in later dynasties of the Egyptian pharaohs.

Imagine that you are living under God and for some reason you lose your faith in God and you are going to live your own life. Later you repent for this and you want to come back to God. This equals the situation of fallen Adam who first had received from God dominion over all of creation, but later he fell and came under evil influence.

Whoever wants to find back the way to God stands as fallen Adam or Eve who are in need of restoration and who are in the same position as the Israelites who were leaving Egypt. For each step in restoration it is needed to bring offerings. The Israelites had served the Egyptians for a long time. Instead of being able to dedicate their lives to God, they had helped the Egyptians to build up their foundation. To make restitution for this, God asked the Israelites to collect all which they could from the Egyptians to bring this as an offering to God.

Even though the Israelites were enslaved, they still should feel to be God's children first. Being God's children, their work for the Egyptians did not belong to the Egyptians, but it belonged to God. The Israelites had to make effort to gather everything from the Egyptians for which they had a right. This was the offering of the Israelites needed to start their new course in the wilderness.

The gold and silver they had earned as slaves in Egypt had to be brought as offerings so God could accept them and work with them. Always when we leave a situation that compares to slavery in Egypt, in a spiritual sense, we need to collect the results of what we did in 'Egypt' and offer that to God.

Later we see that a number of Israelites used that gold to build a golden calf, an idol that represented evil deities of Egypt. This showed that many Israelites had not brought their offerings to God in the right way. They had clinged to the gold as if that gold belonged to themselves and they offered it to evil deities in order to gain blessings for themselves.

Gold is to be offered to God always. It is not to be used for expanding worldly foundations and it is not to be taken as a 'blessing' coming from God.

Religious people never crave for gold or power, they desire for developing their inner relationship to God.