{"id":886,"date":"2007-12-29T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-29T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/contentfeeds\/2007\/12\/exodus-5161.html"},"modified":"2007-12-29T01:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-29T01:00:00","slug":"exodus-5161","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/2007\/12\/exodus-5161.html","title":{"rendered":"Exodus 5:1-6:1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, &#8220;Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Let My people go that they may celebrate a festival for Me in the wilderness.&#8221; But Pharaoh said, &#8220;Who is the Lord that I should heed Him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go.&#8221; They answered, &#8220;The God of the Hebrews has manifested Himself to us. Let us go, we pray, a distance of three days into the wilderness to sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest He strike us with pestilence or sword.&#8221; But the king of Egypt said to them, &#8220;Moses and Aaron, why do you distract the people from their tasks? Get to your labors!&#8221; And Pharaoh continued, &#8220;The people of the land are already so numerous, and you would have them cease from their labors!&#8221;<br \/>\nThat same day Pharaoh charged the taskmasters and foremen of the people, saying, &#8220;You shall no longer provide the people with straw for making bricks as heretofore; let them go and gather straw for themselves. But impose upon them the same quota of bricks as they have been making heretofore; do not reduce it, for they are shirkers; that is why they cry, &#8216;Let us go and sacrifice to our God!&#8217; Let heavier work be laid upon the men; let them keep at it and not pay attention to deceitful promises.&#8221;<br \/>\nSo the taskmasters and foremen of the people went out and said to the people, &#8220;Thus says Pharaoh: I will not give you any straw. You must go and get the straw yourselves wherever you can find it; but there shall be no decrease whatever in your work.&#8221;<br \/>\nThen the people scattered throughout the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw. And the taskmasters pressed them, saying, &#8220;You must complete the same work assignment each day as when you had straw.&#8221; And the foremen of the Israelites, whom Pharaoh&#8217;s taskmasters had set over them, were beaten. &#8220;Why,&#8221; they were asked, &#8220;did you not complete the prescribed amount of bricks, either yesterday or today, as you did before?&#8221;<br \/>\nThen the foremen of the Israelites came to Pharaoh and cried: &#8220;Why do you deal thus with your servants? No straw is issued to your servants, yet they demand of us: Make bricks! Thus your servants are being beaten, when the fault is with your own people.&#8221; He replied, &#8220;You are shirkers, shirkers! That is why you say, &#8216;Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.&#8217; Be off now to your work! No straw shall be issued to you, but you must produce your quota of bricks!&#8221;<br \/>\nNow the foremen of the Israelites found themselves in trouble because of the order, &#8220;You must not reduce your daily quantity of bricks.&#8221; As they left Pharaoh&#8217;s presence, they came upon Moses and Aaron standing in their path, and they said to them, &#8220;May the Lord look upon you and punish you for making us loathsome to Pharaoh and his courtiers&#8211;putting a sword in their hands to slay us.&#8221; Then Moses returned to the Lord and said, &#8220;O Lord, why did You bring harm upon this people? Why did You send me? Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has dealt worse with this people; and still You have not delivered Your people.&#8221;<br \/>\nThen the Lord said to Moses, &#8220;You shall soon see what I will do to Pharaoh: he shall let them go because of a greater might; indeed, because of a greater might he shall drive them from his land.&#8221;<br \/>\n<em>From Parshat Shemot. From THE TANAKH: The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text. Copyright 1985 by the Jewish Publication Society. Used by permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, &#8220;Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Let My people go that they may celebrate a festival for Me in the wilderness.&#8221; But Pharaoh said, &#8220;Who is the Lord that I should heed Him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-torah-reading"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Exodus 5:1-6:1 - Content Feeds<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/2007\/12\/exodus-5161.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Exodus 5:1-6:1 - Content Feeds\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, &#8220;Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Let My people go that they may celebrate a festival for Me in the wilderness.&#8221; But Pharaoh said, &#8220;Who is the Lord that I should heed Him and let Israel go? 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