The Plishtim's Scapegoat

Yesterday, Shabbat of Chol Hamo'ed Pesach 5784, I said a Dvar Torah by my grandparents' שיחיו house. The DT was about the subject of the Israelites having "borrowed" wealth from the Egyptians. It was essentially a combination of what Dr. Aton M. Holzer wrote here and my answer here on Mi Yodeya. The gist is that while different answers have been given over the millennia as to why it was okay for the Israelites to take the Egyptian wealth, apparently only Dr. Holzer has provided a reasonable explanation for why they claimed they were merely "borrowing". He suggested that the borrowing was based on a Hittite ritual similar to the Israelite scapegoat ritual (more on that, see here, pp. 16-17) where the Hittites adorned two slaves, a bull and an ewe with gold and colorful wool and sent them away to take away a plague caused by an angry enemy deity. The Israelites told the Egyptians they would take the 10 plagues from Egypt but they had to do it properly: adorned with wealth, and this had to technically still belong to the Egyptians - hence the "borrowing", otherwise the ritual wouldn't work.

My grandfather שיחיה pointed out that this seems to have also been the story with the Plishtim when they sent back the Ark to the Israelites: They adorned it with gold statues and sent it away on a wagon pulled by oxen. That's a cool connection I hadn't considered when first reading Dr. Holzer's article.


(images taken from here and here)




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