In Exodus
11, the Lord commands the Israelites to ‘plunder the Egyptians,’ to ask for
articles of silver and gold. In Exodus
12:35, after the angel of death has killed the Egyptian firstborns, that’s
exactly what they do.
It’s a
small incident, but worth reflection.
First, there’s an issue of justice involved. The Egyptians had benefitted from Israel’s
‘free labor’ (or at least her unpaid labor!) for a long time. Israel had paid a high price in her toil and
in the loss of her children. This
‘plundering’ was, in that sense, just restitution for what she had lost at the
hands of their slavemasters. Second,
there is a sense in which the Lord is planning for the future. Israel had been in slavery for a long time;
they would need seed money to build a new life in the land the Lord had
promised.
Now, on that
issue of justice, that’s an issue that comes up again and again in the
Scriptures. The theme goes like
this: God’s people suffer at the hands
of this world, but the world itself is their inheritance. So, Jesus says that the meek will inherit the
earth (Matthew 5:5), and a major theme of the gospel of Luke is the reversal
that the Lord will work (cf. the Magnificat—Luke 1—in which the poor are
filled, but the rich are sent away empty; or the parable of the rich man and
Lazarus—Luke 16—in which a poor man is gathered to Abraham’s bosom but the rich
man has already had his reward).
So, often
Christians bemoan their place in the world.
“We’ve been kicked out of schools,” we cry. “We’re given no honor in the public
square. People mock our values.” I do get that, especially since we have had
such a privileged position in the West for so long. On the other hand, there’s a certain
‘desiring the flesh-pots of Egypt’ in that.
We forget that the Lord will give us the ‘plunder’ of the fallen world
when His great restoration is worked.
Said another way, it wouldn’t do for the Israelites to stay in Egypt and
enslave the Egyptians; the Lord’s plan was that they would take the wealth of
Egypt with them to a new land. In the
same way, we are slated not to run a broken world, but to inherit a new
one. Whatever we’ve lost during our
slavery in a fallen world, the Lord will make sure we take the best of this
world into a new world.
There’s another
aspect to think about, too. St.
Augustine, perhaps the most influential theologian of the Western church for 1500
years (he lived at the beginning of the 5th century and his ideas
still set the table for much of our theology), looked at the plundering of
Egypt and allegorized the snot out of it.
He basically argued that Christians ought to plunder the pagan world of
ideas. Here’s a quote:
For, as the Egyptians had not only the
idols and heavy burdens which the people of Israel hated and fled from, but
also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver, and garments, which the same
people when going out of Egypt appropriated to themselves, designing them for a
better use, not doing this on their own authority, but by the command of God,
the Egyptians themselves, in their ignorance, providing them with things which
they themselves, were not making a good use of [Exod. 3:21-22; Exod. 12:35-36];
in the same way all branches of heathen learning have not only false and
superstitious fancies and heavy burdens of unnecessary toil, which every one of
us, when going out under the leadership of Christ from the fellowship of the
heathen, ought to abhor and avoid; but they contain also liberal instruction
which is better adapted to the use of the truth, and some most excellent
precepts of morality; and some truths in regard even to the worship of the One
God are found among them. Now these are, so to speak, their gold and silver,
which they did not create themselves, but dug out of the mines of God’s
providence which are everywhere scattered abroad, and are perversely and unlawfully
prostituting to the worship of devils. These, therefore, the Christian, when he
separates himself in spirit from the miserable fellowship of these men, ought
to take away from them, and to devote to their proper use in preaching the
gospel. Their garments, also,—that is, human institutions such as are adapted
to that intercourse with men which is indispensable in this life,—we must take
and turn to a Christian use (On Christian
Doctrine).
Now, as I read that, I think there’s some danger there,
especially that last line about institutions.
(You may have noticed in my previous comments that I think it’s
precisely our institutions that we need to be most careful about. They tend to be institutions based on the
wrong principles.) However, the idea
that Christians can ‘mine’ the best ideas of the fallen world and still
discover something of God in there is a good one. For example, I’m a fan of Led Zeppelin and
the Allman Brothers. When I was in
college, I had classmates who were surprised I didn’t like Christian
contemporary music. My reply was that
Jimmy Page and Duane Allman were better guitarists. That doesn’t mean I shared their values, just
that I appreciated their music. In the
same way, I don’t like the assumptions that many scientists bring to their work—assumptions
about a godless universe—but I still enjoy the blessings and benefits they have
brought to my life.
Consider
this about Israel. On the one hand, it’s
true that the silver and gold of the Egyptians allowed the Israelites to build
a horrible golden idol at the foot of Sinai (Ex. 32). On the other hand, those same gifts allowed
them to build the most beautiful tabernacle for the Lord’s worship. In the same way, there are aspects of the art
and learning of our fallen world that can be a major temptation to sin. But they have opened up other avenues of
faithful Christian use.
So, on the
one hand, we Christians ‘plunder’ the world around us, putting the things of
the world—its art, its technology, its ideas—to work for the Lord and His
glory On the other hand, we handle all
of those things carefully, recognizing that ultimately our goal is not to
master the things of this fallen world in order to run this fallen world. Our ultimate goal is to rule with God over His
restored heaven and earth.
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