Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
But these cuttlefish — whose very shape is one of those fishy foods the law itself refused — sensing their own exposure, spew their darkness of blasphemy from that quarter, and so, by flinging about and insisting on charges that would tarnish the shining goodness of the Creator, they scatter each man's attention just as it draws near the point. Yet even through these murks we shall track down their malice, and drag the machinations of darkness into the light — chiefly the charge they level at the Creator over that plundering — the swindling away of golden and silver vessels — which he ordered the Hebrews to carry out against the Egyptians. Come now, you most unlucky heretic, I call on you yourself as arbiter: examine the case of each nation first, and only then pass judgment on the author of the command. The Egyptians demand back their vessels of gold and silver from the Hebrews. The Hebrews, for their part, lodge a counter-claim, pleading — on the authority of the same book of Scripture and in the name of those same fathers — that wages are owed them for that servile labor: for the bricks they made, deducted; for the cities and villas they built. What will you decide, elector of the best of gods? That the Hebrews must own up to fraud, or that the Egyptians owe compensation? For they say the matter was actually handled through envoys on both sides — the Egyptians demanding back their vessels, the Jews demanding back the value of their labor. And even so, on the question of the vessels, the Egyptians there conceded the justice of it. Today the Hebrews argue still further against the Marcionites, denying that all that gold and silver could possibly suffice as compensation, if the labor of six hundred thousand men over so many years were reckoned at even a single coin a day. And which was the greater party — those demanding back vessels, or those who had inhabited villas and cities? Which then is the greater grievance — that of the Egyptians, or that of the Hebrews' claim to gratitude? So that, by the sheer verdict of the wrongs done, the Hebrews might strike back at the Egyptians — free men reduced to the slave-pen; so that their scribes might display before their own tribunals nothing but their own shoulders, lacerated by the insulting savagery of the lash — it would have been declared that the Hebrews were owed satisfaction not from a few platters and cups (and those belonging to a few of the wealthiest at that), but from the entire resources of the Egyptians themselves and from collections taken up among the whole populace. So then, if the Hebrews' case is good, then good too is the case — that is, the command — of the Creator, who both made the Egyptians generous without their knowing it, and who eased his own people's plight in the narrow straits of their hasty departure with some quiet compensation. In fact he ordered less to be exacted than was due — the Egyptians ought to have restored the Hebrews their very children as well.
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