KJV ORIGINAL
Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves.
Close to the original. Clear modern English.
✦ MADE SIMPLE
You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as you have done before. Let them go and gather straw for themselves.
⚡ THE BOTTOM LINE
Pharaoh is making the Israelites' work harder by forcing them to find their own straw while still meeting the same brick quota.
📚 Historical Context
This verse comes from Pharaoh's angry response after Moses and Aaron asked him to let the Israelites go worship God in the wilderness. Pharaoh refused and decided to punish the Hebrew slaves by making their already difficult work even more burdensome. In ancient Egypt, straw was mixed with clay to make stronger bricks, and the Egyptians had been providing it to the Hebrew workers.
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