4o8 ROD NOT EMPLOYED— REASONS 



To most of us unacquainted with the making of bricks the 

 cruelty of the Pharaonic command, " There shall be no straw 

 given you, yet shall ye dehver the tale of bricks," seems to 

 consist in demanding from the sojourners the same quantity 

 of output without their possessing, as the Egyptian workers 

 did possess, an essential constituent in the brick-straw. 



But Petrie points out that straw, so far from being an 

 essential of the mixture, is absent from most ancient and 

 modern bricks. The complaint arose because finely chopped 

 straw is very useful for preventing the mud from sticking to 

 the hand, for dusting over the ground, and for coating each 

 lump before dropping it in the mould, thus enabling the work 

 to go on quickly and easily. From the strawless Jew, however, 

 was extorted for the same hours a tale of bricks equal to that 

 of the Egyptian enjoying these advantages. 



In direct opposition to Petrie, Maspero states, and Erman ^ 

 agrees, that the ordinary Egyptian brick, both ancient and 

 modern, is " a mere block of mud, mixed with chopped straw 

 and a little sand." 



Other reasons for the Jewish unfamiliarity with the Rod, 

 viz. its merely local use, and their settlement in the North 

 East of Egypt remote from " the River of Egypt," would fully 

 be met, were it not for Isaiah, with the simple statement that 

 at present they can neither be proved nor disproved. 



But the words of Isaiah xix. 8, " The fishers also shall 

 lament, and all they that cast angle into the Nile shall mourn," 

 surely demonstrate — if we allow that " cast angle " is the 

 proper technical translation, and that the two words cannot 

 mean the mere throwing of a hook with a hand-Hne — that the 

 Israelites during the 430 years (Exodus xii. 40) of their sojourn 

 in Eg3^t did acquire familiarity with the methods of fishing 

 employed by their taskmasters. 



Still, even if we take it as proved that for some reason 

 AngUng was at the time of the Exodus an unknown art to the 

 Jews, why with all the intercourse of the subsequent centuries 



1 Egyptian ArchcBology (1902), 3-4. Erman, op. cit., 417. The English 

 translators state that the bricks were usuaUy unburnt and mixed with short 

 pieces of straw. 



