Exodus 5:10-14 - I will not give you straw

5:10,11

The taskmasters were Egyptians, the foreman were Israelites. They both went out and declared Pharaoh’s edict to the Israelite slaves. “Thus says ...” is the same formulation as “This says the Lord”. Human rulers go wrong when they think they have ultimate authority. All proper human authority is delegated authority. Any authority we have in life is a delegated authority, and we always need to remember that ultimately we are answerable to God. 

5:12-14

The result of this edict was that the Israelites had to go far and wide throughout Egypt to get the straw. The taskmasters were still demanding that they produced the same number of bricks. Tyrants are both utterly evil and utterly stupid. The taskmasters worked their evil by beating the Israelite foreman, the intention being that the foreman would then do the work of urging the slaves to produce bricks at the same rate. While there are tyrants at the top who bear the greatest guilt, all tyrants can only do their evil work if significant numbers of people are willing to go along with it. There are many others who are guilty, not just the leaders. We saw this in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia and China. “Why have you not produced the same number of bricks as you used to?” Tyrants ask incredibly stupid questions, but can inflict terrible violence.