2 Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man borrow of his neighbour, and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold.

3 And the Lord gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants, and in the sight of the people.

Thus far God’s demands to the Pharaoh had been that every man, woman, and child of the Israelites would depart into the wilderness, and that they would bring all of their cattle as well. But today we see this was not all the Israelites would carry with them. The Lord instructed the Israelites to borrow jewels and precious metals from their Egyptian neighbors. “Borrow,” of course being a very loose term. These things were being “borrowed” with no intention ever returning them!

The point of this seems to be to finish the signs of war against the Egyptians. Though the Israelite people did not raise a single sword against their slavers, by the end of this sequence the Egyptians would have had all their firstborn slain, their fields razed to the ground, lost their commercial industries, and all of their valuables would be taken. It would appear exactly as if the Egyptians had been conquered by a great army, but the battles were fought entirely by God, not man.

I can only assume that the devastation of the prior plagues was what caused the Egyptians to so freely part with their treasures. We are told that “Moses was very great in the land,” which seems to suggest that all the people understood where all these curses were coming from. We also know that Pharaoh’s counselors had been advising him to just let the Israelites go, and it seems likely that the sentiment was held by the local populace as well. So whether they trusted the Israelites or not, the Egyptians were likely anxious to appease them and be rid of them.