Exodus 12:31-36

"And he called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, Rise up, get you forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel; and go, serve Jehovah, as ye have said, Take both your flocks and your herds, as ye have said, and be gone; and bless me also. And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people, to send them out of the land in haste; for they said, We are all dead men. And the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading-troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders. And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they asked of the Egyptians, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: and Jehovah gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked, And they despoiled the Egyptians."

The fact of Pharaoh having previously vowed not to see Moses again is not at all inconsistent with what is written here. The stubborn Pharaoh, following the death of his first-born, SIMPLY CHANGED HIS MIND, deciding to follow the will of many of his subordinates who had long wanted to get rid of the Israelites. Some critics, however, find "another source,"[30] but it would be difficult indeed to find a poorer excuse for such a finding than appears here. It is not another source which appears, but a development in the story.

At last, Israel was free! The great drama of the Chosen People which had begun more than four centuries earlier with the call of Abraham was now ready to unfold on a much larger stage of action, but all of the details of God's wonderful promises to this people were in place. The promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were now to be fulfilled by the transfer of Israel into the land of Canaan, despite the fact that a forty-year interval in the wilderness of wanderings still confronted them. They had indeed become a mighty people, and there were already signs that such expressions as "the sands of the seashore," and "the stars of heaven" were indeed appropriate metaphors for the numbers of Abraham's "seed."

Note how carefully the sacred writer included the fulfillment of God's Word to Abraham that Israel would depart from the land of their affliction with "great substance." We have no way of knowing exactly HOW MUCH property they took with them, but it must have been a phenomenal amount. Not only did they have all of their flocks and herds, but they also were enriched by the jewels and raiment given to them by the Egyptians. Esses declared that the gold alone would be worth between fifteen and twenty million dollars today.[31] The truly significant thing about this, however, is that God had foretold this very thing to Abraham nearly half a millennium earlier! There is no intelligent understanding of these remarkable writings as a patch-work collection of prior documents. The synchronization, the mysterious correspondence of all these wonders that more than one thousand years afterward were re-enacted and fulfilled in the deeds and teachings of the Great Passover, and the overwhelming evidence of truth carried in every line of the holy record - these things, and many others, place the Bible utterly above any possibility of human origin. The words of this glorious chapter still speak to millions of believers in Christ all over the world!