11. Go and get your own straw wherever you can find it. But you must make as many bricks as you made before.”
12. So the people went everywhere in Egypt looking for dry stalks to use for straw.
13. The slave masters kept forcing the people to work harder. They said, “You must make just as many bricks as you did when you were given straw.”
14. The king’s slave masters had chosen the Israelite foremen. They had made them responsible for the work the people did. The Egyptian slave masters beat these men and asked them, “Why aren’t you making as many bricks as you made in the past?”