Exodus 5:18

18 Now get to work. You will be given no straw, yet you must deliver the full quota of bricks.”

Exodus 5:18 Meaning and Commentary

Exodus 5:18

Go therefore now, and work
Go about your business, attend to your work, even you officers, as well as your people; work yourselves, as well as see that your people do theirs, and do not trouble me with such impertinent applications:

for there shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of
bricks;
the usual number of bricks, as the Vulgate Latin version has it; though in ( Exodus 5:8 ) , it is rendered in that version the measure of bricks, and so another word is translated by them, ( Exodus 5:14 ) , and perhaps both may be intended, both number and measure; that is, that it was expected and insisted on that they delivered the full number of bricks they used to make, and these of full measure; for bricks were made of different measures, as Vitruvius ^F16 observes; some among the bricks were of two hands' breadth, others of four, and a third sort of five. (See Gill on Exodus 5:7).

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FOOTNOTES:

F16 Ut supra. (Vide Vitruvium de Architectura, l. 2. c. 3. p. 46)

Exodus 5:18 In-Context

16 No straw has been given to your servants, yet we are told, ‘Make bricks!’ Look, your servants are being beaten, but the fault is with your own people.”

17 “You are slackers!” Pharaoh replied. “Slackers! That is why you keep saying, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the LORD.’

18 Now get to work. You will be given no straw, yet you must deliver the full quota of bricks.”

19 The Israelite foremen realized they were in trouble when they were told, “You must not reduce your daily quota of bricks.”

20 When they left Pharaoh, they confronted Moses and Aaron, who stood waiting to meet them.