Exodus 5:18

18 Get going now, and get back to work! No straw will be given to you, and you will still deliver the full amount 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).

---

FOOTNOTES:

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

Exodus 5:18 In-Context

16 No straw is given to your servants, yet they keep telling us to make bricks. And now your servants are being flogged, but the fault lies with your own people."

17 "Lazy!" he retorted, "You're just lazy! That's why you say, 'Let us go and sacrifice to ADONAI.'

18 Get going now, and get back to work! No straw will be given to you, and you will still deliver the full amount of bricks."

19 When they said, "You are not to reduce your daily production quota of bricks," the foremen of the people of Isra'el could see that they were in deep trouble.

20 As they were leaving Pharaoh, they encountered Moshe and Aharon standing by the road;