Go and get your straw yourselves wherever you can find it, but your work will not be reduced in the least.’”
Cruel princes always find cruel servants willing to obey them, and this enmity against God's people breaks through all bounds of reason and justice. The scattered Israelites, forced to gather stubble while the work stays the same, made Pharaoh's tyranny known throughout Egypt; persecution never wins good-will, even from a despot's own subjects.
AI summary
Commenting on Exodus 5:10-14
Go ye, get ye straw, where you can find it,.... Before it was provided by the king, and brought to the brickkilns, but now they are bid to go and fetch it themselves, and get it where they could, whether in fields or barns; and if they were obliged to pay for it out of their labour; it was a greater oppression still: yet not...
Exo 5:9-11 “Let the work be heavy (press heavily) upon the people, and they shall make with it (i.e., stick to their work), and not look at lying words.” By “lying words” the king meant the words of Moses, that the God of Israel had appeared to him, and demanded a sacrificial festival from His people.
Commenting on Exodus 5:9-11