Exodus 1:14

Exo 1:14 And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, [was] with rigour.

Ver. 14. Bitter with hard bondage.] Did we but live a while, saith one, {a} in Turkey, Persia, yea, or but in France, a dram of that liberty we yet enjoy would be as precious to us as a drop of cold water would have been to the rich man in hell, when he was so grievously tormented in those flames.

{a} Mercer.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Exo 1:14. In mortar and brick — It has been supposed by many, that, besides the treasure-cities, mentioned Exo 1:11, and other similar works, the Israelites were employed in raising those enormous piles, termed pyramids, which remain to this day, and probably will remain to the end of the world; “monuments, not so much of the greatness and wisdom, as of the folly, caprice, exorbitant power, and cruel tyranny of the monarchs who projected them. It cannot indeed be denied, that the skill wherewith they were planned equals the vastness of the labour with which they were completed; but then it is evident they never could be useful in any degree adequate to the toil and expense with which they were erected. The supposition, however, is entirely groundless; for the Israelites were employed in making brick; while it is well known the pyramids were built of hewn stone.” — Scott. “The great pyramid,” says Herodotus, “was covered with polished stones, perfectly well joined, the smallest of which was thirty feet long. It was built in the form of steps, on each of which were placed wooden machines to raise the stones from one to another.” Diodorus adds, that “the stories were of very different workmanship, and of eternal duration. It is preserved to our days (the middle of the Augustan age) without being in the least injured. The marble was brought from the quarries of Arabia.” Pliny bears the same testimony: “It is formed of stone brought from the quarries of Arabia.” — Encycl. Brit. So that, it seems evident, the Israelites, who were employed in brick and mortar, had no hand in erecting the pyramids. All manner of service in the field — In cultivating the ground, and, according to Josephus, in cutting canals and trenches, to convey to different parts of the country the waters of the Nile, to raise up mounds, lest the waters overflowing should stagnate, and in other laborious services.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1:14 The only stone that the Egyptians could obtain for building purposes came from the far south of the country. Therefore, in the north where the Hebrews were settled, only the most important state and religious buildings were made of stone. The rest were constructed with mortar and bricks made of durable clay with a binder such as seashells or straw mixed in. After being sun-dried in a form, these materials were surprisingly durable—especially in a land such as Egypt, where there was little rainfall or humidity.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Hebrew, wherewith they served themselves of them by cruelty.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Verse 14. They made their lives bitter] So that they became weary of life, through the severity of their servitude.

With hard bondage] בעבדה קשה baabodah kashah, with grievous servitude. This was the general character of their life in Egypt; it was a life of the most painful servitude, oppressive enough in itself, but made much more so by the cruel manner of their treatment while performing their tasks.

In mortar, and in brick] First, in digging the clay, kneading, and preparing it, and secondly, forming it into bricks, drying them in the sun, c.

Service in the field] Carrying these materials to the places where they were to be formed into buildings, and serving the builders while employed in those public works. Josephus says "The Egyptians contrived a variety of ways to afflict the Israelites for they enjoined them to cut a great number of channels for the river, and to build walls for their cities and ramparts, that they might restrain the river, and hinder its waters from stagnating upon its overrunning its own banks; they set them also to build pyramids, (πυραμιδας τε ανοικοδομουντες,) and wore them out, and forced them to learn all sorts of mechanic arts, and to accustom themselves to hard labour." - Antiq., lib. ii., cap. ix., sec. 1. Philo bears nearly the same testimony, p. 86, Edit. Mangey.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(14) In morter and in brick.—It has been questioned whether the Egyptians used brick as a material for building. No doubt temples, palaces, and pyramids were ordinarily of stone; but the employment of brick for walls, fortresses, and houses, especially in the Delta, is well attested. (See the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund for July, 1880, pp. 137, 139, 143, &c.) Pyramids, too, were sometimes of brick (Herod. ii. 136). The manufacture of bricks by foreigners, employed (like the Israelites) as public slaves, is represented by the kings upon their monuments.

All manner of service in the field.—Josephus speaks of their being employed to dig canals (Ant. Jud. ii. 9, § 1), and there is a trace in Deu_11:10 of other labours connected with irrigation having been devolved on them. Such labours, under the hot sun of Egypt, are exhausting and dangerous to health.

And all their service . . . was with rigour. Rather, besides all their other service, which they made them serve with rigour.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

14. hard service] Exo_6:9 (P) Heb. (EVV. cruel bondage); also Deu_26:6 (EVV. hard bondage); 1Ki_12:4 (= 2Ch_10:4); Isa_14:3.

in mortar and in brick] for the Egyptian buildings: cf. Exo_5:7-8. The ‘mortar’ (lit. clay, Isa_29:16 al.), would be the black Nile-mud, which was used in ancient Egypt not only for bricks (see on Exo_5:6-9; Exo_5:19), but also (Erman, Anc. Egypt, p. 419) for mortar: in the latter case it was usually mixed with potsherds.

in the field] E.g. in constructing canals and dams for conveying water from the Nile to the fields, and in the actual work of irrigation (Deu_11:10). This was laborious; for the water had to be brought to the high-lying fields artificially, by a series of shadufs, or buckets attached to long poles, worked on axles, by which it was gradually raised from one elevation to another. ‘It is hard work to be the whole day raising and emptying the pail of the shaduf, in fact nothing is so tiring in the daily work of the Egyptians as this irrigation of the fields’ (Erman, p. 427). In ancient Egypt this and other agricultural operations were carried on by serfs, slaves, and captives taken in war. The shaduf, constructed exactly as in ancient times, is still a familiar sight on the banks of the Nile: see an illustration of both the ancient and the modern type in Erman, p. 426.

all their service, &c.] The sentence is loosely attached to what precedes, and the construction with ’çth (the mark of the accus.) is very anomalous: cf. however, in the later Heb., Eze_37:19, Zec_12:10.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage,.... So that they had no ease of body nor peace of mind; they had no comfort of life, their lives and mercies were embittered to them:

in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service of the field; if Pelusium was one of the cities they built, that had its name from clay, the soil about it being clayish, and where the Israelites might be employed in making brick for the building of that and other cities: Josephus (d) says, they were ordered to part the river (Nile) into many canals, to build walls about cities, and raise up mounds, lest the water overflowing the banks should stagnate; and to build pyramids, obliging them to learn various arts, and inure themselves to labour: so Philo the Jew says (e), some worked in the clay, forming it into bricks, and others in carrying straw: some were appointed to build private houses, others the walls of cities, and to cut ditches and canals in the river, and obliged day and night to carry burdens, so that they had no rest, nor were they suffered to refresh themselves with sleep; and some say that they were not only employed in the fields in ploughing and sowing and the like, but in carrying of dung thither, and all manner of uncleanness: of their being employed in building of pyramids and canals; see Gill on Gen 47:11.

all their service wherein they made them serve was with rigour; they not only put them to hard work, but used them in a very churlish and barbarous manner, abusing them with their tongues, and beating them with their hands: Philo in the above place says, the king not only compelled them to servile works, but commanded them heavier things than they could bear, heaping labours one upon another; and if any, through weakness, withdrew himself, it was judged a capital crime, and the most merciless and cruel were set over them as taskmasters.

(d) Antiqu. l. 2. c. 9. sect. 1. (e) De Vita Mosis, l. 1. p. 608.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

The use of brick, at all times common in Egypt, was especially so under the 18th Dynasty. An exact representation of the whole process of brickmaking is given in a small temple at Thebes, erected by Tothmosis III, the fourth in descent from Amosis. Immense masses of brick are found at Belbeis, the modern capital of Sharkiya, i. e. Goshen, and in the adjoining district.

All manner of service in the field - Not merely agricultural labor, but probably the digging of canals and processes of irrigation which are peculiarly onerous and unhealthy.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Service. They were forced to till the land, reap, &c. (Menochius)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Service in the field was the basest and most laborious of all their services.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

They made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter and in brick. While stone was the material chiefly employed by the Egyptians for their grand edifices, temples, palaces, treasuries, and the like, brick was also made use of to a large extent for inferior buildings, for tombs, dwelling-houses, walls of towns, forts, enclosures of temples, etc. There are examples of its employment in pyramids (Heb 2:136; Vyse, "Pyramids of Gizeh," vol. 3. pp. 57-71); but only at a time long anterior to the nineteenth and even to the eighteenth dynasty. If the Pharaoh of the present passage was Seti I, the bricks made may have been destined in the main for that great wall which he commenced, but did not live to complete, between Pelusium and Heliopolis, which was to secure his eastern frontier (Birch, "Egypt from the Earliest Times," p. 125). All manner of labour in the field. The Israelitish colony was originally employed to a large extent in tending the royal flocks and herds. (Gen_47:6) At a later date many of them were engaged in agricultural operations. (Deu_11:10) These, in Egypt, are in some respects light, e.g. preparing the land and ploughing, whence the remark of Herodotus (2:14); but in other respects exceedingly heavy. There is no country where care and labour are so constantly needed during the whole of the year. The inundation necessitates extreme watchfulness, to save cattle, to prevent the houses and the farmyards from being inundated, and the embankments from being washed away. The cultivation is continuous throughout the whole of the year; and success depends upon a system of irrigation that requires constant labour and unremitting attention. If the "labour in the field" included, as Josephus supposed (1.s.c.), the cutting of canals, their lives would indeed have been "made bitter." There is no such exhausting toil as that of working under the hot Egyptian sun, with the feet in water, in an open cutting, where there can be no shade, and scarcely a breath of air, from sunrise to sunset, as forced labourers are generally required in do. Me-hemet Ali lost 20, 000 labourers out of 150, 000 in the construction of the Alexandrian Canal towards the middle of the present century.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.