There is no getting away from it. The Bible says in Ex. 3:22 that the holy God told Moses to instruct the Israelites “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.” (New International Version, NIV). This command is repeated in Ex. 11:2-3 and 12:35-36.

There is, at least, an apparent moral difficulty here. The problem though is in the English translation and is softened, even made to disappear, by recourse to the original Hebrew text.

As Semitic languages specialist Walter C. Kaiser Jr., informs, the key verb in all three texts mentioned earlier concerning the articles acquired by the Israelites is shāal (ā is long as in ‘alms’ while a is short as in ‘man’). Kaiser tantalizes though when he writes that this verb can mean “to ask for something with no thought of return (e.g. Judg. 8:24; 1 Sam. 1:28)” or “to borrow [as] in texts like Exodus 22:14[13], 2 Kings 4:3 and 6:5.” (Toward Old Testament Ethics, 1991, 265).

So then shāal is not terribly helpful towards a resolution of the textual/moral problem. Attention then turns to the intensive form of the verb used in the divine comment “you shall plunder the Egyptians.” (Ex. 3:22; 12:36).

This latter verb, nātsal, says Kaiser, “…means to plunder, but not by fraud, deceit or cunning devices. [Nātsal] is a military metaphor that could involve taking away by force, but never by fraud.” (same p. 265).

God, back in Gen. 15:14 had promised Abraham that his descendants, after serving time in Egypt, would come out with great possessions. This promise was reiterated to Moses at Sinai (Ex. 3:20-21) and Ps. 105:37 reflects this as historical fact.

But God thundered at Sinai “thou shalt not steal”. There is no breach even of this later command because God had said “And I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty-handed.” (Ex. 3:21, NIV)

No wonder then that the Israelites led by the influential Moses (Ex. 10:7) found such favourable response to their seemingly presumptuous request for ‘bling, bling’.

So, as Kaiser concludes “…Israel merely ‘asked’ and God strangely moved the hearts of the populace to respond lavishly. The result was as if they had ‘despoiled’ or ‘plundered the Egyptians when in fact they had only been given favor in their eyes.” (p. 266).

There is no ‘ripping off’ after all and this reinforces the old maxim “what is apparent is not always real”.

On Monday night (Feb. 16), during an interview with me on Drive Time Live (HOT 102 FM in Jamaica) about my new book Revelations on Ras Tafari, host June Hines joined Rasta poet Mutabaruka in expressing mild disgust with my use of Negro as a synonym for Black in the context of the discussion and more so my use of certain craniofacial features to describe who a Black person is.

Let Muta and June ponder the words of two celebrated Afrocentrists, Cheik Anta Diop and Chinweizu and get over themselves.

Diop says, “Anticipating the agreement of all logical minds, I call Negro a human being whose skin is black; especially when he has frizzy hair…”[ The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality? 1974, 136]. In a footnote (n. 2, 288) to this use of the term Negro, Diop says, “The probability of encountering men with black skin and woolly hair, without any other ethnic feature common to Negroes, is scientifically nil…[my emphasis]”

The celebrated Nigerian polymath Chinweizu, in his 1987 book Decolonising the African Mind, contends on page 83,

Herodotus, “father of history” among the Greeks, not only acknowledged the antiquity of Egyptian civilization, and its having served as the civiliser of the Greeks; he also gave his eye-witness testimony that the ancient Egyptians were black skinned and wooly [sic] haired. Aristotle, though in an insulting vein, supports Herodotus on the race of the Egyptians when he remarked that the Egyptians and Ethiopians were cowards because of their “excessively black colour”. All of which, would make the Egyptians blacks/negroes.

Chinweizu continues later in his book to say with unintended application to Muta and June, “Those who are squeamish about being called black or negro are free to substitute the term African, provided they recognise the equivalence of the terms, and use them correctly. After all, an African is defined as a negro, a member of the black race, a native of Africa. Thus, a white African is a contradiction in terms. In particular, Arabs, being whites native to Asia; and Anglo/Boers, being whites native to Europe, are not Africans, whatever their pretensions, and they cannot legitimately be included in an African or Pan-African organisation.” [p.169]

Those who wish to see my comments on these quotations should consult Appendix I (pages 64-87) of my new book,  Revelations on Ras Tafari

by Rev. Clinton Chisholm