Exodus 5:18

18 Go and get back to work! No straw will be given to you, but you still need to make the same number 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 is supplied to your servants, yet they say to us, ‘Make bricks!' Look at how your servants are being beaten! Your own people are to blame!"

17 Pharaoh replied, "You are lazy bums, nothing but lazy bums. That's why you say, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifices to the LORD.'

18 Go and get back to work! No straw will be given to you, but you still need to make the same number of bricks."

19 The Israelite supervisors saw how impossible their situation was when they were commanded, "Don't reduce your daily quota of bricks."

20 When they left Pharaoh, they met Moses and Aaron, who were waiting for them.