Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Exodus 5:8
And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish [aught] thereof: for they [be] idle; therefore they cry, saying, Let us go [and] sacrifice to our God.
8. tale ] that which is told or counted: an archaism for ‘number’ (= Germ. Zahl). So v. 18, 1Sa 18:27 , 1Ch 9:28. Cf. Milton, L’Allegro, 67 f., ‘And every shepherd tells [i.e. counts: Psa 48:12; Psa 147:4 ] his tale [viz. of sheep] Under the hawthorn in the dale.’ The Heb. here means properly a rightly regulated amount.
therefore they cry, &c.] Their request to be allowed to make a pilgrimage to their God is merely a pretext for idleness.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Verse 8. And the tale of the bricks] Tale signifies the number, from the Anglo-Saxon [Anglo-Saxon], to number, to count, c.
For they be idle therefore they cry – Let us go and sacrifice] Thus their desire to worship the true God in a proper manner was attributed to their unwillingness to work; a reflection which the Egyptians (in principle) of the present day cast on these who, while they are fervent in spirit serving the Lord, are not slothful in business. See Clarke on Ex 5:17.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
8. talean appointed number ofbricks. The materials of their labor were to be no longer supplied,and yet, as the same amount of produce was exacted daily, it isimpossible to imagine more aggravated crueltya perfect specimen ofOriental despotism.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, you shall lay upon them,…. Oblige them to make and bring in the same number of bricks they used to do, when straw was brought to them and given them; by which it appears, that their daily task was such a number of bricks:
you shall not diminish ought thereof; not make any abatement of the number of bricks, in consideration of their loss of time and their labour in going to fetch straw from other places:
for they be idle; and want to be indulged in a lazy disposition, which ought by no means to be connived at:
therefore they cry, let us go and sacrifice to our God; suggesting, that this request and cry of theirs did not proceed from a religious principle, or the great veneration they had for their God, but from the sloth and idleness they were addicted to.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT VERSUS SABBATH BREAKING
Exo 5:8-11
IN speaking this evening on the subject The Fourth Commandment vs. Sabbath Breaking, it is not my purpose to enter into any controversy with those who keep Saturday for the Sabbath. It would be easy enough to answer their arguments, but as useless as easy, for when you have convinced some people against their will, they remain of the same opinion still.
THE SABBATH
The man who still supposes that God made the earth in six days of twenty-four hours each, beginning with Sunday morning and finishing with Friday night, and rested on Saturday, is too anachronistic to be worthy of reply. The man who supposes that we get our daysSunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday from God, or from Israel, and therefore that Saturday is to be kept as the Sabbath, is so ignorant of history that an argument with him would be wasted, for these terms are heathen and not Hebraic. Sunday
is the Suns day, a day devoted to the worship of the sun; Monday is moons day; Tuesday, Tyrs, god of marshall honor; Wednesday, Wodens day; Thursday, Thors day; Friday, Friggas, and Saturday, Saturns day; so that every one of them smells of heathenism; and the man who would undertake to show that the order of Sunday as the first day, and Saturday as the seventh day, was the very arrangement of which God was speaking when He gave the Law, would have on hand a Herculean task.
SUNDAY OR SATURDAY
Again, a reading of the 23rd chapter of the Book of Leviticus shows us that in Israel two Sabbaths often came together, one immediately succeeding the other, and thereby the whole arrangement was changed, and the first day of the week was made the Sabbath, even as it is at this present time.
One other thought for those who insist upon Saturday as the seventh day: How did God manage it with the two sides of the world? Surely He is not more interested in Asia than in America, and while it is Saturday here, it is Sunday over there; but, as I have suggested, it is useless to answer the man who has only one article of faith.
You have heard of the Irishman, who, when he arrived in this country, was asked what were his politics, and replied, Sure, and Im agin the guvernmint.
As a citizen, I have no choice between days; one is as sacred to me as another. But, as a Christian, the day that commemorates the resurrection of my Lord makes for me the sweetest Sabbath, and I celebrate it as such, and am glad that in this I have the example of the Apostles of Jesus Christ, who, on the testimony of the New Testament, did the same.
Jesus Christ gave the best interpretation of the fourth commandment when He said,
The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, so that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.
And I want to make my plea tonight for a Sabbath made for man.
FOR HIS MUSCLE
I believe the physical man requires one days rest in seven, but I think many people misinterpret the term rest. It is not a synonym of sleep, nor an equivalent of indolence. How much we need to insist upon that fact!
If you had gone through the streets of the city of Minneapolis this morning, taking a peep into the hundreds and thousands of homes, you would have noted that the most marked change from the custom of week days in many of them, consisted in the straggling line of breakfasters. The father makes himself hoarse calling the children to rise; the servant girls lose their patience while trying to keep the breakfast warm, and the community is growing a custom of Sabbath-wasting instead of Sabbath-keeping.
One of the commonest excuses of professedly good people for remaining away from church is this of extra sleeping on Sunday. Doubtless there are some so situated that they need the additional rest, but usually the man who loves a dollar so well that six A. M. in the week finds him chasing it, but cares so little for the Church of God that he sleeps until after ten Sunday morning, needs regeneration.
If you have imagined that God gave the Sabbath for sleep, you had better read the fourth commandment afresh.
And yet one should rest from the usual employment of life. His muscles require it. Relaxation of the right sort means invigoration. Mr. Peabody, a scientist of note, made observations that seemed to prove that even so dead a thing as a car-wheel would last longer and do the service of a greater number of days by resting from wonted revolutions one day in seven. Shall men imagine themselves less liable to the wear of unremittant toil than the deadest and hardest thing that moves? No wonder our seven-day workers resort to stimulants! No wonder that Germany, the land of so little Sunday, is a net work of beer gardens. When you take away from the muscles of a man the divinely-prescribed tonic of rest, Satan will furnish him a substitute, but that substitute is a poor one, for while it stimulates, it also consumes, and life is greatly shortened.
The world was interested in the long life of Mr. Gladstone. His health was so abundant and his vigor of body and mind so tenacious that many inquired of him the secret of his robust old age. Years ago, in the Review of Reviews, he answered this question by telling a story. He said there was once a road leading out of London on which more horses died than any other, and inquiry revealed the fact that the road was perfectly level; consequently the animals in traveling over it used only one set of muscles ! The application is easy. He hastens the untimely end of his life who does not break the dead level of secular employment by keeping the seventh day sacred to rest.
There is both rest and recreation in a change. But the change should not be so violent as to stimulate the spirits unduly, nor yet so vile as to bring bitterness in the end.
When I was pastor in Chicago, where my pastoral work often led me into the crowded and dirty districts, I came to think a properly conducted Sunday excursion which should carry the people into the country was no crime. To many of those people a day among Gods trees, breathing His pure air, and listening to some servant of His explain the Word, would be a benediction indeed. In a city like this, where room is ample, parks of the most beautiful sort within easy access, such an excursion is without any occasion whatever, and is worthy to be condemned. And, even there, I never knew of a Sunday excursion out of which there did not come cursing and bitterness. Better to be shut up in a pest-house and breathe the poison of diseased air, than to go into the country on the Sabbath day astride a beer-keg and be brought home at night drunk and degraded. Henry Ward Beecher said truly enough, German Sundays in which men gather together in beer gardens to drink are sinks in which men drain their passions, and their influence is not refining. It is a good thing to rest one day in seven. It is a good thing to go abroad and breathe the pure air, to give such respite to the muscles as will bring a blessing to the whole body, for know ye not that your bodies are the temples of the living God? But get that change in a Christ-like way.
Again, going back to the statement of Jesus Christ, The Sabbath was made for man, I plead its uses
FOR THE MIND
One of the saddest facts incident to shop-opening, and Sunday labor of all sorts, exists in the ignorance it imposes upon its subjects. The eight-hour day of some gives abundant opportunity for study, while the remittant toil of others furnishes the same. But there are thousands of men, in almost as many pursuits, who work early and late, from Monday morning until Sunday night, and call no day their own. With such, intellectual growth is out of question, and the mind, like the body, must be fed, or else it wastes away.
Some years since, a gentleman passing near a coal mine in Pennsylvania, saw a field filled with mules. He inquired of a small boy what the animals were used for. To this the boy replied, Those are the mules that work all the week down in the mine, but on Sunday they bring them up into the light, because if they didnt they would go blind. It is a good deal so with man. Ceaseless toil destroys mental discernment, and dims the intellectual vision.
When Christ said, The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath, He meant that every son of Adam should call this day his own, and be privileged to so employ it as to effect a self-improvement. As one has said, It is a day in which every man ought to be privileged to feel, I am not a toiler; I am not a worker; I am not an underling; I am not an apprentice, nor a journeyman; I am not g man on wages; I am not a hired man; I am a man, and this day is my own. I have no taskmaster or overseer today. I belong to myself, to my wife, to my children, and to my neighbors in my generous nature. * * This is Gods day, and therefore it is mine, and my head goes up as high as it can reach. I am not to crouch today; I am to walk as free as the freest. I am to be as independent as the most independent. And, indeed, the Sabbath is such a day to the man who makes its sunny hours conserve the interests of his intellectual nature by high and holy thinking, profitable converse, and clean and helpful reading.
Home life has not sufficiently emphasized this fact. The hateful Sunday newspaper has played the camels old trick in many a house, crowding out angelic occupants. I am not pleading for a Puritan Sabbath. I dont believe it is a sin for a boy to sing on Sunday, nor yet for one to whistle. I doubt if it is wicked for a girl to giggle that day; and I dont believe that God meant to have us make it a day in which boys and girls should be set to the Bible and made to spend all the hours in its study, or the task of committing some catechism or other.
Henry Ward Beecher says he used to watch the sun until the hills west of his fathers house rose right up and were ready to hide it, and then in irrepressible exaltation, and to his mothers insufferable grief, he used to cry out, Oh, Charlie, look; its most down! His mothergood woman in her way held to the notion that Sunday was for committing Scripture and the longer catechism, and I dont much blame the boys for getting tired of the task. I dont believe that God ever meant that His Sabbath should be made a hardship for children.
Isaiah speaks of our calling the Sabbath a delight, and it ought to be such. As I look back over my own life, I testify that to me it was such. If I could go back to the old Kentucky home tonight, and the Great God was willing to excuse father and mother from their places about His throne, that they might meet me there, I should be glad to bow before them and thank them both for making the Sabbath the most blessed day of my boyhood.
In that country home we rested from the accustomed work. It was a day of best clothes. It was a day of church-going. It was a day of social converse. It was a day of good books and papers. It was a day of sweet Bible study, and I think now, sweet as is the present Sabbath, it scarcely surpasses that which the boy enjoyed twenty-five years gone. I plead for such a Sabbath for every boy, for every girla Sabbath for rest of body and building of brain.
Dr. Talmage tells us that when he was going up Mount Washington, before the railroad had been built, on the way to the tip-top house the guide would come around to the horses, and when they were about to cross a very steep and dangerous place, he would stop them and tighten the girdles of the horses and straighten the saddles; and, I have to tell you, says Talmage, that this road of life is so steep and full of peril, we must, at least one day in seven, stop and have the harness of life readjusted, and our bodies and minds re-equipped.
Sir Henry Taylor, the statesman, pled for at least one day in seven; Not exclusively, he said, for devotional exercises, but because of the advantage derived from quitting the current of busy thoughts and cutting out for himself a sort of cell for reading and meditation, a space resembling one of those bights in the course of a rapid stream where the waters seem to tarry and repose themselves for a while; and he declares that one who shall have been deeply imbued in his early years with love of meditative studies, will find that in such tranquillity the recollection of them will spring up in his mind with a light and spiritual illumination, as a bubble of air springs from the bottom of staid waters. Christ knew that, touching mind, the Sabbath was made for man.
I make my last plea
FOR HIS MORALS
I think it is generally conceded that the Sabbath-keeping public is always the more moral public.
England is better off than the continent, morally, by just as much as it more regards the Sabbath; and Canada is better off than America, morally, by just as much as it more regards the Sabbath. Seldom have I visited in a city where I was so favorably impressed with its moral atmosphere as when, years ago, I went for the first time to visit Toronto. When the Sabbath day came and I found all labor laid aside, I discovered the secret of the citys character.
No wonder Lord McCauley, in his speech before the House of Commons concerning the Ten Hours Bill, said, The natural difference between Campania and Spitzbergen is trifling when compared with the difference between a country inhabited by men full of bodily and mental vigor, and a country inhabited by men sunk in bodily and mental decrepitude. Therefore it is that we are not poorer, but rather because we have, through many ages, rested from our labors one day in seven. A day is not lost while industry is suspended, while the plow lies in the furrow, while the exchange is silent, while no smoke ascends from the factory. A process is going on quite as important to the wealth of nations as any process which is performed on more busy days. Man, the machine of machines, the machine compared with which all the contrivances of the Watts and the Arkwrights are worthless, is repairing and winding up so that he returns to his labors on the Monday with clear intellect, with livelier spirit, with renewed vigor, and, McCauley might have added, with increased morals!
The man who lives on the dead level of labor, who never has a day of respite therefrom, who knows few hours of converse with his own family, fewer still for good books, and absolutely none for the Church of God, is driven by that very circumstance to a lower and lower conception of life. His violation of the fourth commandment in its spirit, as surely as in its letter, will result in a disregard of the other nine, for whosoever offendeth in one point is guilty of all.
I do not believe in such legislation concerning the Sabbath as imposes Sunday upon a man who believes in keeping Saturday instead; but I know that the rest of one day in seven is not only a fundamental of Christianity, but an indispensable prop to public morals. Emerson said, Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence. It invites to the noblest solitude and the best society, and I make bold to say that, to the ends of the world, and all ages considered, such a thing as good society without a Sabbath is unknown.
But, after all, the morals in which I am most interested are those that result from having received Jesus Christ. He is indeed the Center, the Source, the Author and the Finisher of the morals of both letter and spirit. The man who lets Sunday pass over without seeking Him; the man who lets Sunday go by without considering His salvation; the man who, in the hours of the Sabbath, can forget His life, His death, His resurrection, His proffers of grace, fails to see the highest end of Sabbath-keeping. Upon every remembrance of this day, I thank God that its solitude has effected the noblest thought, the highest aspirations, and God has employed that solitude to send men in search of eternal salvation.
Dr. Boardman tells us that an English gentleman was inspecting a house in New Castle with a view to buying it. The landlord, after having shown him the premises, took him to an upper window and remarked, You can see Durham Cathedral from this window on Sundays. How is that? asked the visitor. Because, on Sundays there is no smoke from the factory chimneys.
Ah, beloved, on this day when you have not had to go about the factory; on this day when the smoke from its chimneys have not been in your eyes; on this day when you have been so far removed from that same smoke that the sky has not been clouded for you, have you looked for the Cathedral of God, for the City not made with hands, eternal in the heavens? And have you thought upon the Man of that citythe Man of Nazarethwho gave His life that you might live, and who, after His resurrection, ascended up on high to make ready for you a mansion, and who said, J go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am there ye may be also? Have you done that?
One evening in Tremont Temple, Boston, a man arose and said, Nearly twenty years ago now, I brought a poor drunken fellow into this church one night. He listened to the sermon. He was convicted of sin. That night he sought the Lord and was saved. I do not know where he is now, but I thank God for that Sunday night, and for that salvation. To the surprise and delight of every one, a man arose in the other part of the room, and facing the other said, Yes, sir, it is so. I am your man. You brought me in here. I sought the Lord that night and He has been my Saviour ever since. Thank God for that Sunday!
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
Exo 5:8 And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish [ought] thereof: for they [be] idle; therefore they cry, saying, Let us go [and] sacrifice to our God.
Ver. 8. For they be idle. ] I heard a great man once say, saith Luther, Necesse est otiosos esse homilies qui ista negotia religionis curant. They must needs be idle fellows that are so much taken up about the business of religion. See Trapp on “ Exo 5:4 “
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
tale. A. S. talu, a number.
thereof. The suffix is Masculine and refers to the people, “diminish [your exactions] from them. “
and. Some codices, with one early printed edition, Targum of Onkelos, and Septuagint, read “that we may”.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
tale: Tale denotes number, from the Anglo-Saxon taellan, to number, count, etc.
ye shall lay: Psa 106:41
Reciprocal: Neh 9:10 – they Joh 12:5 – was
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Exo 5:8. They are idle The cities they built for Pharaoh were witnesses for them that they were not idle; yet he thus basely misrepresents them, that he might have a pretence to increase their burdens.