My dear and venerable Father:
Many days have passed since I wrote to you. You will wish to hear the ultimate issue of the command of Pharaoh, to increase the burdens of the Hebrews, and its effects upon them.
In obedience to this command, the taskmasters and officers of this unhappy people went out and strictly fulfilled it. The poor Hebrew brick-makers, in whose work coarse straw of wheat cut fine is necessary to make the clay cohere, as they are only dried in the sun, are now distributed all over Egypt seeking straw, which hitherto the Egyptian laborers brought to them in carts and laden barges. Thus dispersed, they gather stubble, and dry bulrushes, and grass, and every thing they can in their haste find on the surface of the ground; for if night comes and their tale of bricks falls short, they are beaten. As, therefore, one half of the time of many is consumed in searching the highways and fields, instead of being all the time, as heretofore, engaged only in making brick, the task put upon them is an impossible one; and everywhere the sound of the rod and whip, and the cry of sufferers, goes up from the land. At length the elders and officers of the Hebrews (for their own people are often made their taskmasters, who also had to account to their Egyptian captains for their fulfillment of the king's command), got courage from despair, and meeting the king as he was abroad in his chariot, cast themselves before him, crying, "Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us? It is not our fault that we cannot make up the number of bricks, as heretofore, seeing straw is not given us; and thy servants are beaten; but the fault is in thine own officers."
Pharaoh angrily answered, "Ye are idle! Ye are idle! Ye have not enough to do, or ye would not think ye had time to go into the desert to sacrifice to your God. Go, therefore, and do your tasks, for there shall no straw be given you."
"And shall we deliver the tale of bricks?" they cried.
"To the last one of them!" answered the king; and with an impatient sign for them to stand aside from his chariot-wheels, he dashed forward on his way, attended by his brilliant retinue. The unhappy men then perceived "that they were in evil case," as one of them said to me in relating this interview; and meeting Moses and Aaron in the fields not long afterwards, one of their number said, indignantly, and with grief—
"The Lord look upon you, Moses and Aaron, and judge you, because by your interference with the king, thou hast put a sword into the hand of Pharaoh to slay us."
Moses looked sorrowfully and troubled, and raising his eyes heavenward as he left them without a reply, for he wot not how to answer, they heard him cry unto his God, and say—
"Lord, wherefore hast Thou so evil entreated this Thy people? Why is it that Thou didst send me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Thy name, he hath done evil to this people; neither, O Lord God, hast Thou delivered Thy people at all!"
Then came a voice from heaven, which they heard, and said—