8. Yet you shall levy upon them the same quota of bricks as they made previously. Do not reduce it. They are lazy; that is why they are crying, ‘Let us go to offer sacrifice to our God.’
9. Increase the work for the men, so that they attend to it and not to deceitful words.”
10. So the taskmasters of the people and their foremen went out and told the people, “Thus says Pharaoh, ‘I will not provide you with straw.
11. Go and get your own straw from wherever you can find it. But there will not be the slightest reduction in your work.’”
12. The people, then, scattered throughout the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw,