Exodus 5:7

Straw to make brick. Having no intention of being intimidated by the God of the Hebrews, and proud in the security of his own power, Pharaoh was determined to enforce his will. Suspecting that their wish to go into the desert was nothing but an excuse invented by idlers and prompted by a thirst for freedom that might endanger the kingdom, he devised a plan for making the oppression more cruel than it already was.

In ancient Egypt bricks were made just as they are today, sometimes with and sometimes without straw. More commonly, the bricks contained some type of plant binder along with the clay, usually straw, called teben in Biblical Hebrew and tibn in Egyptian Arabic today. The process of brickmaking in ancient Egypt is represented by several models found in Egyptian tombs, and also in a wall painting in the tomb of the vizier Rekhmire, who lived under Thutmose III in the middle of the 15th century B.C. It shows men drawing water from a pool, mixing mud with a hoe, carrying the mixture in jars to the brickmakers, and the brickmakers forming the bricks in wooden molds. A foreman with a stick in his hand watches over the group of workmen. The men carrying bricks are described as “captives which his majesty brought for the works of the temple of Amon.” Some of the captives depicted are Semites and resemble the Hebrews.

Moses does not present the Hebrews as making “bricks without straw,” as is sometimes erroneously stated. Rather, Pharaoh’s decree specifically required them to use straw, but to provide it themselves. Had the Hebrews proceeded to make brick without straw they would have been violating the decree, and this the taskmasters would hardly have permitted. Such bricks would have been decidedly inferior in quality, since chopped straw increases the strength of mud bricks several times. This is due partly to the presence of the straw stalks themselves and partly to the chemical action of decaying vegetable matter upon the brick mixture. When the mixture is allowed to stand for a few days, the bricks are both stronger and easier to make. Some have erroneously interpreted the presence of strawless bricks in the walls of certain ancient Egyptian buildings as evidence confirming the narrative of Exodus 5:7, 8. Such reports, however, are based on a misunderstanding of the Bible record and ignorance of the art of brickmaking as practiced in the valley of the Nile (see The Biblical Archaeologist, vol. 13, no. 2 [May, 1950], pp. 22-28).