Comentario citado sobre Deuteronómio 15:13

וישאלו איש מאת רעהו ואשה מאת רעותה כלי כסף וגו', the meaning of שאלה here is not the same as when women “borrow” kitchen utensils and the like, it being understood that these will be returned to the lender. G’d, i.e. Moses, commanded the people to ask for these trinkets, garments, etc., as outright gifts. G’d would see to it that the Israelites asking for this would be considered by the Egyptians as deserving of this so that they would gladly part with the items in question. This did not involve any misrepresentation on the part of G’d, the Egyptians being perfectly aware that nothing they would give their Israelite neighbours could even remotely compensate them for the wages these people had never received during all these years. In that connection, consider that a Jewish servant (for whose services his master paid six years’ wages in advance to the servant’s creditor) at the end of his 6 years of service must be given an ex gratia payment by his master so that he can establish himself economically. (Deuteronomy 15,13-14). How much more so would the Israelites be entitled at this time to a small installment of all the money owed them for 210 (or 86) years of slave labour!

וישאלו איש מאת רעהו ואשה מאת רעותה כלי כסף וגו', the meaning of שאלה here is not the same as when women “borrow” kitchen utensils and the like, it being understood that these will be returned to the lender. G’d, i.e. Moses, commanded the people to ask for these trinkets, garments, etc., as outright gifts. G’d would see to it that the Israelites asking for this would be considered by the Egyptians as deserving of this so that they would gladly part with the items in question. This did not involve any misrepresentation on the part of G’d, the Egyptians being perfectly aware that nothing they would give their Israelite neighbours could even remotely compensate them for the wages these people had never received during all these years. In that connection, consider that a Jewish servant (for whose services his master paid six years’ wages in advance to the servant’s creditor) at the end of his 6 years of service must be given an ex gratia payment by his master so that he can establish himself economically. (Deuteronomy 15,13-14). How much more so would the Israelites be entitled at this time to a small installment of all the money owed them for 210 (or 86) years of slave labour!

וישאלו איש מאת רעהו, “let them each ask from their fellow Egyptian male, etc.” This “request” was not similar to a man or a woman asking his or her respective neighbour for some tool on the understanding that after he or she has finished using it it would be returned it to its owner. Here G’d’s instructions were to ask for the respective items as outright gifts. It was understood that G’d would make the Egyptians feel well disposed toward the Israelites so that they would willingly comply with their requests for such gifts. The last thing G’d had in mind was that the Israelites, at the very moment when their redemption was at hand, would leave behind the impression that they had fooled their neighbours and pretended that they would give back the items in question. According to Jewish law whenever a servant is released from service after he has toiled for the agreed period of time, he is entitled to receive a stake from his erstwhile master to enable him to start his economic independence. This is spelled out in Deut. 15, 13-14: “but when you send him away free, you shall not send him away empty-handed. Furnish him out of your flocks, your threshing floor, and vat, with which the Lord has blessed you.” If this law applies to treatment of a fellow Jewish servant whose wages the master has paid six years in advance, how much more so were the Jewish slaves in Egypt entitled to receive some silver trinkets in compensation for over 200 years of slavery for which no wages had ever been paid.
We may find the expression רעהו both in the masculine and the feminine form as peculiar when applied to Egyptians who could hardly be described as equal to the Israelites so that this definition would apply. We have to answer that prior to the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai all human beings were treated as equal before the law. Hence the expression רע “fellow human being” was appropriate. Ever since the giving of the Torah Gentiles are not again referred to by that description. Seeing that G’d had offered the Torah to the Gentile nations and they had refused it they no longer qualified as equals. Henceforth Jews were described as brothers and companions of G’d as we know from Psalms 122,8: “for the sake of My brothers and friends, I pray for your well-being.” Our sages in Baba Kama 113 explain the phrase לכל אבדת אחיך (Deut. 22,3) as “your brother, but not a Gentile.” In other words, a Jew does not have to go out of his way to restore lost property to a Gentile seeing he is not his brother anymore. The same law applies to the prohibition of charging or paying interest to others. While the Torah forbids this inasmuch as it writes: “you must not charge interest to your brother” (Deut. 23,20), this excludes those whom the Torah does not recognize as our brothers, i.e. the Gentile.

ולא יראו פני ריקם AND NONE SHALL APEAR BEFORE ME EMPTY — According to the plain sense of the verse this is an independent statement and does not refer to the firstborn just mentioned — because in connection with the command concerning the firstborn there is no duty of appearing before the Lord; but it is another (a separate) prohibition merely connected by a conjunctive ו with the former statement and means: when you go up to the festival gathering to Jerusalem to appear before the Lord, none shall appear before Me empty; it is your duty to bring the burnt offering prescribed for the appearance before My face (Chagigah 7a). According to the Halachic explanation of the Boraitha this portion of the verse is redundant (since the same commandment already appears Exodus 23:15) and is consequently “free” (מופנה) to be used for a גז"ש (an analogy based on verbal similarity in two texts, viz., the word ריקם here and in the text Deuteronomy 15:13 לא תשלחנו ריקם “thou shalt not let him go away ריקם”) — it is repeated here after the law about the first born to teach you that the outfit given to a Hebrew slave when he leaves your service should consist of five Sela’im-worth of each of the things (mentioned Deuteronomy 15:14: thy sheep, thy threshing floor, and vinepress) just as the ransom of the firstborn is five Sela’im. Thus are we taught in Treatise Kiddushin 17a.