Exodus 5

Moses and Aaron finally make their case for the Israelites leaving to Pharaoh, and of course he rejects it. What I find interesting is two things:

1) Moses asks only to let the Israelites take a 3-day journey to worship God, not to leave Egypt forever. That is of course the eventual goal, but God had instructed them to ask for this first. It seems to me like it nearly borders on lying - but we'll have to see how it turns out when Pharaoh eventually grants this request.

2) As a punishment of sorts, Pharaoh demands that the Israelites must continue to meet their work quotas - but now must do so without the aid of straw to make bricks. This tells me that either the making of bricks itself or the building of things with them was a primary task of the Israelites in captivity, and we get some confirmation of that in earlier chapters when it was mentioned that they built two cities in Egypt. I am curious about this method of brick production as well: making them with straw hardly seems to me like it would a strong, effective 'brick', but such manufacturing is not a strong point of my knowledge.