What Does Exodus 5:11 Mean?
Go, take straw for yourselves wherever you can find it, but none of your work shall be cut away.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Go ye, get you straw where ye can find it: yet not ought of your work shall be diminished.THE KEY
The means are withdrawn, but the measure of labor stays whole.
THE MEANING
A demand can remain full even when what supports it is taken away. The missing straw and undiminished work stand side by side, exposing deprivation as part of the demand itself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that an unchanged quota means nothing has been taken from the worker.
THE ROOT
נִגְרָע
nigraʿ
GROWS FROM
גרע
garaʿ
to subtract, withdraw, or diminish
“cut away” in this verse is nigraʿ. This root names subtraction: the verse says that nothing is subtracted from the workers’ service even as straw is no longer supplied. The strain is in that arithmetic, what is taken away from the means does not lessen the demand.
ALSO GROWS
tigre'u: to subtract or diminish from something
תִּגְרְעוּ
The same root describes taking something away, making clear that “diminished” carries the sense of a deduction.
yigraʿ: to withhold or reduce a woman’s food, clothing, or marital provision
יִגְרָע
Here the root concerns material provision; it illuminates the verse’s sharp pairing of lost supplies with labor that remains unchanged.
מֵעֲבֹדַתְכֶם
me'avodatkhem
GROWS FROM
עבד
ʿ-b-d
to serve, work, or labor
The word for “work” grows from the same root as the word for a servant. It carries the sense of service within it, showing that the labor named here is not detached activity but compelled service.
ALSO GROWS
ʿeved: a servant or enslaved worker
עֶבֶד
This branch names the person who serves; it reveals the human relationship contained within the word for labor.
ʿavodah: work or service performed
עֲבֹדָה
This is the noun used in the verse: the demanded work is also service.
THE PATTERN
Power shifts the cost of a demand onto workers while keeping the burden in place.
Go now, therefore, and serve, for no straw shall be given to you, yet you shall give the measure of bricks.Woe to the one who builds his house out of alignment, and his upper rooms without judgment, who makes his neighbor serve for nothing, and does not give him the wage of his work.And he said, Woe to you also, experts in the instruction! For you load people with burdens too heavy to carry, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with a single finger.THE THREAD
Go now, therefore, and serve, for no straw shall be given to you, yet you shall give the measure of bricks.The “work” in both verses comes from עבד (ʿ-b-d), meaning to serve or labor. The next verse names what this undiminished service must produce: the same tally of bricks without supplied straw.
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