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 made the Israelite foremen 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?”
15. Then the Israelite foremen went to the king and complained, “Why are you treating us, your servants, this way?
16. You give us no straw, but we are commanded to make bricks. Our slave masters beat us, but it is your own people’s fault.”
17. The king answered, “You are lazy! You don’t want to work! That is why you ask to leave here and make sacrifices to the Lord.