Exodus 1:14
New International Version
They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.

New Living Translation
They made their lives bitter, forcing them to mix mortar and make bricks and do all the work in the fields. They were ruthless in all their demands.

English Standard Version
and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.

Berean Standard Bible
and made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar, and with all kinds of work in the fields. Every service they imposed was harsh.

King James Bible
And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.

New King James Version
And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage—in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was with rigor.

New American Standard Bible
and they made their lives bitter with hard labor in mortar and bricks and at all kinds of labor in the field, all their labors which they violently had them perform as slaves.

NASB 1995
and they made their lives bitter with hard labor in mortar and bricks and at all kinds of labor in the field, all their labors which they rigorously imposed on them.

NASB 1977
and they made their lives bitter with hard labor in mortar and bricks and at all kinds of labor in the field, all their labors which they rigorously imposed on them.

Legacy Standard Bible
and they made their lives bitter with hard slave labor in mortar and bricks and in all kinds of slave labor in the field, all their slave labor which they brutally compelled them to do.

Amplified Bible
They made their lives bitter with hard labor in mortar, brick, and all kinds of field work. All their labor was harsh and severe.

Christian Standard Bible
and made their lives bitter with difficult labor in brick and mortar and in all kinds of fieldwork. They ruthlessly imposed all this work on them.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
and made their lives bitter with difficult labor in brick and mortar and in all kinds of fieldwork. They ruthlessly imposed all this work on them.

American Standard Version
and they made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field, all their service, wherein they made them serve with rigor.

Aramaic Bible in Plain English
And they were making their lives bitter with hard labor in clay and in bricks and in every work of the field, all the servitude that they were serving for them with hardship.

Brenton Septuagint Translation
And they embittered their life by hard labours, in the clay and in brick-making, and all the works in the plains, according to all the works, wherein they caused them to serve with violence.

Contemporary English Version
that their lives were miserable. The Egyptians were cruel to the people of Israel and forced them to make bricks and to mix mortar and to work in the fields.

Douay-Rheims Bible
And they made their life bitter with hard works in clay, and brick, and with all manner of service, wherewith they were overcharged in the works of the earth.

English Revised Version
and they made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field, all their service, wherein they made them serve with rigour.

GOD'S WORD® Translation
They made their lives bitter with back-breaking work in mortar and bricks and every kind of work in the fields. All the jobs the Egyptians gave them were brutally hard.

International Standard Version
making their lives bitter through hard labor with mortar, bricks, and all kinds of outdoor labor. They ruthlessly imposed all this work on them.

JPS Tanakh 1917
And they made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field; in all their service, wherein they made them serve with rigour.

Literal Standard Version
and make their lives bitter in hard service, in clay, and in brick, and in every [kind] of service in the field; all their service in which they have served [is] with rigor.

Majority Standard Bible
and made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar, and with all kinds of work in the fields. Every service they imposed was harsh.

New American Bible
making life bitter for them with hard labor, at mortar and brick and all kinds of field work—cruelly oppressed in all their labor.

NET Bible
They made their lives bitter by hard service with mortar and bricks and by all kinds of service in the fields. Every kind of service the Israelites were required to give was rigorous.

New Revised Standard Version
and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

New Heart English Bible
and they made their lives bitter with hard labor, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of labor in the field, all their labors which they ruthlessly made them do.

Webster's Bible Translation
And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service in which they made them serve, was with rigor.

World English Bible
and they made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and in brick, and in all kinds of service in the field, all their service, in which they ruthlessly made them serve.

Young's Literal Translation
and make their lives bitter in hard service, in clay, and in brick, and in every kind of service in the field; all their service in which they have served is with rigour.

Additional Translations ...
Audio Bible



Context
Oppression by a New King
13They worked the Israelites ruthlessly 14and made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar, and with all kinds of work in the fields. Every service they imposed was harsh. 15Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah,…

Cross References
Acts 7:19
He exploited our people and oppressed our fathers, forcing them to abandon their infants so they would die.

Exodus 1:11
So the Egyptians appointed taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor. As a result, they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.

Exodus 1:13
They worked the Israelites ruthlessly

Exodus 1:15
Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah,

Exodus 2:23
After a long time, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned and cried out under their burden of slavery, and their cry for deliverance from bondage ascended to God.

Exodus 6:9
Moses relayed this message to the Israelites, but on account of their broken spirit and cruel bondage, they did not listen to him.

Leviticus 25:43
You are not to rule over them harshly, but you shall fear your God.


Treasury of Scripture

And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigor.

their lives.

Exodus 2:23
And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage.

Exodus 6:9
And Moses spake so unto the children of Israel: but they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage.

Genesis 15:13
And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;

in mortar.

Psalm 68:13
Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.

Psalm 81:6
I removed his shoulder from the burden: his hands were delivered from the pots.

Nahum 3:14
Draw thee waters for the siege, fortify thy strong holds: go into clay, and tread the morter, make strong the brickkiln.

was with rigour.

Exodus 1:13
And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour:

Exodus 5:7-21
Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves…

Exodus 20:2
I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

Jump to Previous
Bitter Bondage Brick Bricks Clay Conditions Egyptians Embittered Field Fields Hard Hardest Harshness Imposed Kind Kinds Life Lives Making Manner Mortar Rigor Rigorously Rigour Ruthlessly Serve Service Sorts Used Wherein Work
Jump to Next
Bitter Bondage Brick Bricks Clay Conditions Egyptians Embittered Field Fields Hard Hardest Harshness Imposed Kind Kinds Life Lives Making Manner Mortar Rigor Rigorously Rigour Ruthlessly Serve Service Sorts Used Wherein Work
Exodus 1
1. The children of Israel, after Joseph's death, increase.
8. The more they are oppressed by a new king, the more they multiply.
15. The godliness of the midwives in saving the male children alive.
22. Pharaoh commands the male children to be cast into the river














(14) In morter and in brick.--It has been questioned whether the Egyptians used brick as a material for building. No doubt temples, palaces, and pyramids were ordinarily of stone; but the employment of brick for walls, fortresses, and houses, especially in the Delta, is well attested. (See the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund for July, 1880, pp. 137, 139, 143, &c.) Pyramids, too, were sometimes of brick (Herod. ii. 136). The manufacture of bricks by foreigners, employed (like the Israelites) as public slaves, is represented by the kings upon their monuments.

All manner of service in the field.--Josephus speaks of their being employed to dig canals (Ant. Jud. ii. 9, ? 1), and there is a trace in Deuteronomy 11:10 of other labours connected with irrigation having been devolved on them. Such labours, under the hot sun of Egypt, are exhausting and dangerous to health.

And all their service . . . was with rigour. Rather, besides all their other service, which they made them serve with rigour.

Verse 14. - They made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter and in brick. While stone was the material chiefly employed by the Egyptians for their grand edifices, temples, palaces, treasuries, and the like, brick was also made use of to a large extent for inferior buildings, for tombs, dwelling-houses, walls of towns, forts, enclosures of temples, etc. There are examples of its employment in pyramids (Herod. 2:136; Vyse, 'Pyramids of Gizeh,' vol. 3. pp. 57-71); but only at a time long anterior to the nineteenth and even to the eighteenth dynasty. If the Pharaoh of the present passage was Seti I., the bricks made may have been destined in the main for that great wall which he commenced, but did not live to complete, between Pelusium and Heliopolis, which was to secure his eastern frontier (Birch, 'Egypt from the Earliest Times,' p. 125). All manner of labour in the field. The Israelitish colony was originally employed to a large extent in tending the royal flocks and herds (Genesis 47:6). At a later date many of them were engaged in agricultural operations (Deuteronomy 11:10). These, in Egypt, are in some respects light, e.g. preparing the land and ploughing, whence the remark of Herodotus (2:14); but in other respects exceedingly heavy. There is no country where care and labour are so constantly needed during the whole of the year. The inundation necessitates extreme watchfulness, to save cattle, to prevent the houses and the farmyards from being inundated, and the embankments from being washed away. The cultivation is continuous throughout the whole of the year; and success depends upon a system of irrigation that requires constant labour and unremitting attention. If the "labour in the field" included, as Josephus supposed (1.s.c.), the cutting of canals, their lives would indeed have been "made bitter." There is no such exhausting toil as that of working under the hot Egyptian sun, with the feet in water, in an open cutting, where there can be no shade, and scarcely a breath of air, from sunrise to sunset, as forced labourers are generally required in do. Me-hemet Ali lost 20,000 labourers out of 150,000 in the construction of the Alexandrian Canal towards the middle of the present century.

CHAPTER 1:15-22

Parallel Commentaries ...


Hebrew
and made their lives
חַיֵּיהֶ֜ם (ḥay·yê·hem)
Noun - masculine plural construct | third person masculine plural
Strong's 2416: Alive, raw, fresh, strong, life

bitter
וַיְמָרְר֨וּ (way·mā·rə·rū)
Conjunctive waw | Verb - Piel - Consecutive imperfect - third person masculine plural
Strong's 4843: To be, bitter

with hard
קָשָׁ֗ה (qā·šāh)
Adjective - feminine singular
Strong's 7186: Hard, severe

labor
בַּעֲבֹדָ֣ה (ba·‘ă·ḇō·ḏāh)
Preposition-b | Noun - feminine singular
Strong's 5656: Work of any kind

in brick
וּבִלְבֵנִ֔ים (ū·ḇil·ḇê·nîm)
Conjunctive waw, Preposition-b | Noun - feminine plural
Strong's 3843: Brick, tile

and mortar,
בְּחֹ֙מֶר֙ (bə·ḥō·mer)
Preposition-b | Noun - masculine singular
Strong's 2563: A bubbling up, of water, a wave, of earth, mire, clay, a heap, a chomer, dry measure

and with all kinds
וּבְכָל־ (ū·ḇə·ḵāl)
Conjunctive waw, Preposition-b | Noun - masculine singular construct
Strong's 3605: The whole, all, any, every

of work
עֲבֹדָ֖ה (‘ă·ḇō·ḏāh)
Noun - feminine singular
Strong's 5656: Work of any kind

in the fields.
בַּשָּׂדֶ֑ה (baś·śā·ḏeh)
Preposition-b, Article | Noun - masculine singular
Strong's 7704: Field, land

Every
כָּל־ (kāl-)
Noun - masculine singular construct
Strong's 3605: The whole, all, any, every

service
עֲבֹ֣דָתָ֔ם (‘ă·ḇō·ḏā·ṯām)
Noun - feminine singular construct | third person masculine plural
Strong's 5656: Work of any kind

they imposed
עָבְד֥וּ (‘ā·ḇə·ḏū)
Verb - Qal - Perfect - third person common plural
Strong's 5647: To work, to serve, till, enslave

was harsh.
בְּפָֽרֶךְ׃ (bə·p̄ā·reḵ)
Preposition-b | Noun - masculine singular
Strong's 6531: Harshness, severity


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OT Law: Exodus 1:14 And they made their lives bitter (Exo. Ex)
Exodus 1:13
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