Tertullian, Against Marcion 20

Those cuttlefish, in whose likeness the law also rejected that fish-eating of foods so they might feel their own translation, vomit up darknesses of blasphemy from here and so scatter the intention of each one now at hand, throwing out and affirming the very things that darken the shining goodness of the Creator. Yet even through those darknesses we will track wickedness and drag the talents of darkness into the light, charging the Creator with—most of all—that fraud and robbery of gold and silver which He commanded the Hebrews to commit against the Egyptians (Exodus 12:35-36). Come, most unhappy heretic, I call you yourself to be the judge: recognize which of the two nations acted first, and then you will pass judgment on the author of the command. The Egyptians demand gold and silver vessels back from the Hebrews. The Hebrews, for their part, file counter-petitions, citing the same scriptural authority in the name of the same fathers to claim that wages ought to be restored to them for that servile labor—the bricks deducted, the cities and villages built. What will you judge, chooser of the best God? Must the Hebrews admit fraud, or the Egyptians pay compensation? For they also say it was handled thus through envoys on both sides: the Egyptians demanding their vessels, the Jews demanding their labor. And yet the Egyptians renounced those injustices against themselves. Today the Hebrews will allege even more against the Marcionites, denying that compensation is sufficient no matter how much gold and silver, if the labor of six hundred thousand over so many years is reckoned even at single daily coins. But which side carries the greater claim—those demanding vessels, or those inhabiting villages and cities? Is the grievance therefore greater for the Egyptians, or the debt of gratitude for the Hebrews? So that by the sole judgment of injuries the Hebrews might repel the Egyptians—free men forced into a workhouse, so that they might show only their own shoulders to their overseers at their benches, lacerated by the contemptuous atrocity of whips—not with a few platters and cups from a few wealthy men, but with everything, everywhere, and the contributions of all the people, it would have been necessary to satisfy the Hebrews. Therefore if the Hebrews' cause is good, the cause—that is, the command—of the Creator is also good, who made the Egyptians grateful without their knowing it and marked out His own people in the time of the exodus with some solace of silent compensation. Clearly He commanded less to be exacted. For the Hebrews ought to have restored the sons of the Egyptians as well.