Against Marcion 2.20

But these cuttlefish — in figure of whom the law also refused that fishy creature as food — as soon as they feel themselves exposed, spew out the ink of blasphemy and so scatter each person's attention just when it is closing in, flaunting and asserting things that would darken the shining goodness of the Creator. But even through these mists we shall follow their wickedness and drag the devices of darkness into the light — devices which charge the Creator above all with that fraud and robbery of gold and silver which he commanded the Hebrews to commit against the Egyptians. Come, most unhappy heretic, I call on you yourself as arbiter: first hear the case on both sides, and then you will judge the author of the command. The Egyptians demand back from the Hebrews the vessels of gold and silver. The Hebrews in turn bring counter-claims, alleging that, in the name of the same fathers and on the evidence of the same document of Scripture, wages must be paid to them too for that servile labour: for bricks made, for cities and country houses built. What will you judge, you who have chosen the supremely good god? That the Hebrews must admit fraud, or the Egyptians compensation? For it is said that the case was argued in this way through envoys on both sides, the Egyptians demanding back the vessels and the Jews demanding back their labour. And the Egyptians, being in the wrong, gave up their claims; but today the Hebrews plead further against the Marcionites, denying that any quantity of gold and silver would be enough to compensate them, if the labour of six hundred thousand men over so many years were valued at even a single coin a day. Which is the greater claim: that of those demanding back vessels, or of those who built country houses and cities? Which, then, is greater: the Egyptians' complaint or the Hebrews' claim? If free men, forced into a workhouse, were to strike back at the Egyptians only with a suit for injuries — if only their overseers were to show before the judges' benches their backs torn by the insulting savagery of the lash — the court would have pronounced that satisfaction was due to the Hebrews not with a few dishes and cups, the property of a few rich men at most, but with the entire wealth of them all and a levy on the whole population. If, then, the Hebrews' cause is good, the Creator's cause too — that is, his command — is good, who both made the Egyptians generous without their knowing it and, at the time of the departure, settled accounts with his people by the slight comfort of a silent compensation. He plainly ordered less to be exacted than was owed: for the Egyptians ought to have given the Hebrews back their sons as well.