A short Insight into Judges, Chapter 8 By Rabbi Nisson Dov Miller

In Parshas Shemos (3,22) we read of the command to the women of B'nei Yisroel “v'sha'alah isha mishchenta …. klei chesef u'chlei zahav u'smalos” - “Each women shall “sha'alah” from her neighbor ...silver vessels, golden vessels and garments.” The Radak understands this as a request to borrow these items from the Egyptians. As we find a borrower being called a sho'eil throughout Tanach. In truth, this seems to fit in line with the gemora in Sanhedrin (91a) that describes an Egyptian who made a claim in the court of Alexander of Macedonia for all of the riches that the Jews had taken with them when they left Egypt. G'viha ben P'sisa, defending the Jews, responded that the Egyptians should pay the Jews for the labor of (up to) 600,000 Jews who toiled in Egypt for all of those years without getting paid. It would seem that the gemora understands that the Jews would have owed the Egyptians the return of their items were it not for the fact that the Jews were owed their “slave wages”.