Misplaced Trust

In days of old (3,325 years ago), when Jews endured enslavement and hard labor in Egypt, God, through Moses, unleashed 10 plagues to force Pharoah and his countrymen to free the Jews and let them depart for the desert. Every month a new plague terrorized the oppressors; The plague smit for the first week, and for the next three weeks Egyptians got a respite - a time in which to reconsider and release the Jewish people. Moses would also warn the oppressors of each oncoming plague, giving the Egyptians further impetus to implement God's request, "Let My people go!".

Although Egyptians worshipped pagan elements, some of them now abandoned faith in their gods and came to realize the Jewish God prevails. When Moses announced the plague of deadly hail, these Egyptians, unlike their peers, heeded his warnings and took their prize steeds into their own houses with them.

Nevertheless, even these refined Egyptians, now cognizant of God's power and His affinity for the Jewish people, changed their minds once the Jews had escaped Egypt, and offered these fine horses to Pharoah who, through change of heart, now desired to hitch chariots of steel to them to chase the Jews and bring them back to forced slavery.

This mutable faith of Gentiles in God our sages address when they pronounce, "Even the best of Gentiles..." are quite worthless, if not worse. A Jew should always rely on God rather than entrust his expectations to the good will of even well-meaning Gentiles.