And the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with harshness;
Israel came into Egypt as honoured guests and settled in the best of the land. This verse marks the moment their welcome turned into slavery. Two questions press on us. Why did God allow His own people to be crushed? And what does the picture teach?
The change was total. This was not one ruler's whim. The whole nation turned on Israel, and what they suffered was no ordinary work.
Verse 13 shows that it was not only a new king who watched Israel's growing strength with fear and jealousy. "The Egyptians ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves," and made their lives bitter with hard labour, in town and country. This was not just service. It was harsh slavery — as complete a reversal of the place they first held in Goshen as could be.
Pharaoh had a reason. He feared a growing people who might one day leave. Commentators see in his policy the world's lasting quarrel with God's people.
Pharaoh is in fact the god of this world, and so he must be against the Lord's people. So we read at once of his crafty schemes and spiteful plans to destroy their prosperity, and to reduce them to helpless and hopeless slavery. And what was his motive? He feared that they would multiply, and that if war broke out they would join his enemies, fight against him, and leave the land. Satan knows what we easily forget: the world must hate the children of God.
Egypt had not always been bitter. That is why, one writer argues, the slavery was needed. And he says God Himself brought it about.
There was a time when Egypt pleased us well enough, as for a time it pleased Israel. We know how in the wilderness they not only longed after the good things of Egypt, but went after its gods too. They copied the worship of Egypt when they made the golden calf. They had a flourishing and happy time, a time when they were not slaves, but the very opposite. And it was God who, as He says, "raised up Pharaoh," and so brought about this slavery. God promised Abraham this very furnace of affliction in the vision of Genesis 15... It was the necessary means to bring them out for the inheritance He promised them.
Another writer points to the danger God was guarding them from.
Their oppression and sorrow in Egypt was also permitted for their own good. The idolatry of Egypt began to corrupt the chosen people.
Nothing in their condition qualified them for what God was about to say over them. He told Pharaoh, not Israel, that this despised workforce was His son, His firstborn.
He was to hear that this nation of slaves, whom he had trampled on, was the son, the firstborn of the Lord of Hosts... Who could have supposed that God would pass by the ruling, cultured race of the day, take up the cause of a nation of slaves, and bind them so closely to Himself? ... What had they done to deserve it? Nothing. What state were they in when He said it? Hopeless and utter misery.
Moses later had to make his own choice about these same slaves.
They were poor whip-driven slaves, worked without mercy, but they were THE PEOPLE OF GOD. That settled it for Moses.
One writer takes the Egyptian taskmaster as a picture of sin. Freedom from that master comes by one road only.
The flesh will always serve the law of sin. Sin is a cruel taskmaster, like the Egyptians who drove Israel without mercy. The only way of freedom from this great slave owner is death. A man owns a slave and holds him in hard bondage, but there comes a day when that slave no longer answers the master's call. He is dead, and there ends the domination of the master. "But," you may say, "I am not dead. I have not received the wages that sin pays." That is true. But it is also true that Jesus, in perfect love, received those wages for you.
- Ruthless — not ordinary work but harsh slavery, in town and field. It was the complete reverse of the place Israel first held in Goshen.
- Fear — Pharaoh crushed them so they would never leave. Commentators see in him the world's fixed hostility to the people of God.
- Furnace — God had promised Abraham this affliction. He used it to loosen Egypt's hold on a people who had grown comfortable there, and to guard them from Egypt's idols.
- Firstborn — they were still slaves and had earned nothing. Yet God called this nation His son, and their misery was no barrier to His claim.
- Freedom — sin is a taskmaster like Egypt. The slave goes free only through death, and Christ took that death in his place.
and they embittered their life with hard labour in clay and bricks, and in all manner of labour in the field all their labour with which they made them serve was with harshness.
Exodus opens with the family of Israel forced into slavery, and this verse shows what that slavery looked like day after day. Two questions press: why did God let His people sink so low, and what do the mortar and bricks teach us now?
One writer sets Egypt's cruelty beside what God is doing about it.
The Egyptians made the people of Israel serve harshly. … But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to wipe out all memory of them from the earth, even in a day when the moral foundations have collapsed. His eyes are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry. But the furnace grew hotter still, and God's intervention took a clearer and stronger form.
The verse names three kinds of labour. One writer sees each one serving a different Egyptian interest.
Take the three areas of labour in verse 14. "Mortar" would speak of Egypt forcing them to work to help its unity, since mortar is what unites. The "brick" speaks of Egypt's progress, and "all manner of service" of Egypt's prosperity. The world is determined to have believers bow to its authority for the sake of its own selfish ends.
Another writer traces bricks back to their first appearance in Scripture.
Scripture first mentions bricks at Babel, Gen. 11:3. The next mention is here in Egypt, Ex. 1:14. Bricks speak of human material, man's imitation of stone which is divine material. … In Babel it is "a name"; in Egypt it is "treasure cities."
The bondage did not begin the moment Israel arrived. It came later, and one writer ties it to a promise God made to Abraham.
There was a time when Egypt pleased us well enough, just as it pleased Israel for a time. … They had a flourishing and happy time, when they were not slaves at all, but quite the opposite. And it was God who, as He says, "raised up Pharaoh," and so brought about this slavery. God promised Abraham this very furnace of affliction in the vision of Gen. 15. … It was the necessary means to bring them out for the inheritance He promised them. It is His way to make them the people He wants them to be.
Their condition could hardly be lower. That is what makes God's tie to them so surprising.
Who could have supposed that He would pass by the ruling, highly cultured race of the day? Yet He took up the cause of a nation of slaves, and tied Himself closely to them. … What state were they in when God announced this? They were in hopeless, crushing misery (Exodus 1:13-14; 2:23). And He announced it not to them, to strengthen them for the fight, but to their slave-drivers, the Egyptians, to make them set the people free.
That is what Moses later saw when he looked at the brickfields and made his choice.
They were unwanted foreigners, treated with the utmost rigour as slaves. Their lives were made bitter by reason of their hard bondage as they laboured at brick-making and worked in the fields under the scorching sun (Exodus 1:13-14). But, in spite of their low estate and hard bondage, these slaves were the people of God.
One writer sees our own former position in theirs.
They were a set of slaves — so were we; they were in bondage to a hard taskmaster — so were you and I by nature. Satan, the god and prince of this world, keeps every unredeemed, unconverted sinner in his grip. … They were slaves in Egypt, which pictures the world. They were under the power of this heartless king, held in the bitterest slavery. No wonder their souls became distressed — they were miserable.
God did not mean to leave them there.
He was not going to leave His people in the brick-kilns of Egypt, under the lash of Pharaoh's slave-drivers. They were His people, and He would act toward them in a manner worthy of Himself. … He could use Egypt as a school and Pharaoh as a teacher, and He did. But when the needed work was done, He set aside both the school and the teacher. He brought His people out with a strong hand and an outstretched arm.
- Bitter — Egypt worked Israel harshly in clay, brick and field, and God's face is set against those who do such evil.
- Bricks — mortar, brick and field labour picture Egypt's unity, progress and prosperity. Bricks are human material, first used at Babel, then here.
- Furnace — the slavery came only after happier years. It answers the furnace of affliction God promised Abraham, His means of bringing them out to their inheritance.
- Ours — Egypt pictures the world, and Pharaoh the power that grips the unconverted. The misery of the brickfields is the misery of a life not yet delivered.
- Ended — the slaves in the mud were still God's people. God used Egypt only as a school, and set school and teacher aside when the work was done.