Exodus 1:11

Therefore they did set taskmasters over them, to afflict them with their burdens,.... This was the first scheme proposed and agreed on, and was carried into execution, to appoint taskmasters over

Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.

Taskmasters, Heb. masters of tribute, who were to exact from them the tribute required, which was both money and labour; that their purses might be exhausted by the one, their strength by the other, and their spirits by both. To afflict, or, oppress, or humble; to spend their strength by excessive labours, and so disenable them for the procreation of children. Treasure cities, where they laid the king’ s money or corn, which is reckoned among treasures, 32:27, and wherein a great part of the riches of Egypt consisted; for they had corn enough, not only for themselves, but to sell to other countries; so that Egypt was accounted the granary of the Roman empire. Or, defenced cities, in which garrisons were to be placed, which seems best to agree with the place and use of them. For they were in the borders of the land, and among the Israelites, which appears concerning the one from , (where the land in which they were placed is called Ramases, which in Hebrew consists of the same letters with this Raamses, and seems to be so called then by anticipation from the city of that name now built in it,) and may be reasonably presumed concerning the other; and therefore it is most probable that they were built to keep the Israelites in subjection, and to hinder them from going out of the land.

Exodus 1:11 Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.Ver. 11. To afflict them.] Because they would not "serve God with gladness of heart." For now they began to go awhoring after the idols of Egypt. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities.] They built also those famous pyramids, as some think, of which it is reported, that for the great height of them, a man cannot shoot an arrow so high as the midst of the lower tower, whereon the spire stands. Bucholcer. Turk. Hist., fol. 544.

(11) Task-masters.—Heb., chiefs of tributes. The Egyptian system of forced labour, which it was now resolved to extend to the Israelites, involved the appointment of two sets of officers—a lower class, who personally overlooked the labourers, and forced them to perform their tasks, and a higher class of superintendents, who directed the distribution of the labour, and assigned to all the tasks which they were to execute. The “task-masters” of the present passage are these high officials. To afflict them.—This was the object of the whole proceeding. It was hoped that severe labour under the lash would produce so much suffering that the number of the Israelites would be thinned, and their multiplication stopped. Humanly speaking, the scheme was a “wise” one—i.e., one likely to be successful. They built for Pharaoh treasure-cities.—By “treasure-cities” we are to understand “magazines”—i.e., strongholds, where munitions of war could be laid up for use in case of an invasion. (In 1 Kings 9:19, and 2 Chronicles 8:4, the same expression is translated “cities of store.”) The Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty gave great attention to the guarding of the north-eastern frontier in this way. Pithom.—This city is reasonably identified with the “Patumus” of Herodotus (ii. 158), which was in Lower Egypt, not far from Bubastis (Tel Basta). It is mentioned in the inscriptions of the nineteenth dynasty under the name of Pi-Tum (Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. ii. p. 128). It was, as the name implies, a city of the sun-god, and was probably not very far from Heliopolis, the main seat of the sun-god’s worship. Raamses.—Pi-Ramesu, the city of Rameses, was the ordinary seat of the Court during the earlier part of the nineteenth dynasty. It appears to have been a new name for Tanis, or for a suburb of Tanis, which overshadowed the old city. Rameses II. claims to have built the greater part of it; but it was probably commenced by his father, Seti, who made the defence of the north-eastern frontier one of his main cares. The name must be considered as a mere variant rendering of the Egyptian Ramessu or Ramesu. The site is marked by the mounds at San.

Verse 11. Set over them task-masters] שרי מסים sarey missim, chiefs or princes of burdens, works, or tribute; επισταταςτωνεργων, Sept. overseers of the works. The persons who appointed them their work, and exacted the performance of it. The work itself being oppressive, and the manner in which it was exacted still more so, there is some room to think that they not only worked them unmercifully, but also obliged them to pay an exorbitant tribute at the same time. Treasure cities] ערי מסכנות arey miscenoth, store cities - public granaries. Calmet supposes this to be the name of a city, and translates the verse thus: "They built cities, viz., Miscenoth, Pithom, and Rameses." Pithom is supposed to be that which Herodotus calls Patumos. Raamses, or rather Rameses, (for it is the same Hebrew word as in Genesis 47:11, and should be written the same way here as there,) is supposed to have been the capital of the land of Goshen, mentioned in the book of Genesis by anticipation; for it was probably not erected till after the days of Joseph, when the Israelites were brought under that severe oppression described in the book of Exodus. The Septuagint add here, καιΩν, ἡεστινἩλιουπολις· and ON, which is Heliopolis; i.e., the city of the Sun. The same reading is found also in the Coptic version. Some writers suppose that beside these cities the Israelites built the pyramids. If this conjecture be well founded, perhaps they are intended in the word מסכנות miscenoth, which, from סכן sachan, to lay up in store, might be intended to signify places where Pharaoh laid up his treasures; and from their structure they appear to have been designed for something of this kind. If the history of the pyramids be not found in the book of Exodus, it is nowhere else extant; their origin, if not alluded to here, being lost in their very remote antiquity. Diodorus Siculus, who has given the best traditions he could find relative to them, says that there was no agreement either among the inhabitants or the historians concerning the building of the pyramids. - Bib. Hist., lib. 1., cap. lxiv. Josephus expressly says that one part of the oppression suffered by the Israelites in Egypt was occasioned by building pyramids. See Clarke on Exodus 1:14. In the book of Genesis, and in this book, the word Pharaoh frequently occurs, which, though many suppose it to be a proper name peculiar to one person, and by this supposition confound the acts of several Egyptian kings, yet is to be understood only as a name of office.

11. They were consequently brought into a condition of virtual slavery and compelled to do forced labour. The corvιe was an institution common in the despotisms of antiquity, and resorted to whenever an Oriental monarch had stone to be quarried, palaces or temples to be built, &c. Aristotle (Pol. viii. (v.) 11, p. 1313 b 18 ff., cited by Knob.) mentions it as a measure adopted by tyrants to curb the spirit of their subjects, and cites as an example the Egyptian pyramids. Solomon introduced it into Judah for the purpose of carrying out his great buildings (1 Kings 5:13-14; 1 Kings 9:15): how unpopular it was, may be judged from the fact that Adoniram, the superintendent of the corvιe, was stoned to death by the people (1 Kings 12:18). gang-masters] Lit. captains (i.e. overseers) of labour-gangs,—the word mas being the technical term for a body of men employed on forced labour: cf. 1 Kings 5:13-14; 1 Kings 9:15 (where it is rendered ‘levy’). burdens] The word regularly used of heavy burdens, carried under compulsion: see Exodus 2:11, Exodus 5:4-5, Exodus 6:6-7; and cf. cognate words in 1Ki_Exodus 5:15; 1 Kings 11:28 (RVm.), Psalms 81:6. Pharaoh] The official, not the personal, designation of the Egyptian king. The word is the Egyptian Per-‘o, which means properly the Great House, and in inscriptions of the ‘Old Kingdom’ (1–11 dynasties) denotes simply the royal house or estate; but afterwards (somewhat in the manner of the expression, ‘Sublime Porte’) it gradually became a title of the monarch himself, and finally (in the 22nd and following dynasties) it was prefixed to the king’s personal name (see F. LI. Griffith’s luminous art. Pharaoh in DB.). store cities] For provisions, materials for war, &c., perhaps also as trade emporia: cf. 1 Kings 9:19 (= 2 Chronicles 8:6); 2 Chronicles 8:4; 2 Chronicles 16:4; 2 Chronicles 17:12. Pithom] the ΙΙάτουμος of Hdt. ii. 158, described by him as being on the canal made partially by Necho (b.c. 610–594) for the purpose of connecting the Nile with the Red Sea[96]. The site was discovered in 1883 by M. Naville. Excavating at a spot about 60 miles NE. of Cairo, called, from a red granite monolith of Rameses II, seated between the gods Ra and Etτm, which has long existed there, Tell el-Maskhuṭ ?a, the ‘Mound of the statue,’ M. Naville soon met with inscriptions shewing that the ancient name of the place was P-etτm, the ‘Abode of Etτm’ (the sun-god of Heliopolis). Proceeding further he found that Pithom was a city forming a square of about 220 yds. each way, enclosed by enormous brick-walls, some 6 yds. thick, containing a Temple, and also a number of rectangular chambers, with walls 2 or 3 yds. thick, not communicating with one another, but, like the granaries depicted on the monuments, filled from above, shewing that they were store-chambers (see DB. iii. 887b, EB. iii. 3784).

Taskmasters - The Egyptian “Chiefs of tributes.” They were men of rank, superintendents of the public works, such as are often represented on Egyptian monuments, and carefully distinguished from the subordinate overseers.

11. Taskmasters — Chiefs of tribute. The words are noteworthy, since they are found designating the same officers both in Hebrew and Egyptian.