Kommentar zu Schemot 1:11

עליו [THEREFORE THEY DID SET] OVER THEM (עליו over him) i. e. over the people.

SAREI MISIM’ (OFFICERS OF THE TRIBUTE) TO AFFLICT THEM. Pharaoh imposed a tribute upon the Israelite people to take men from them for the king’s projects. He appointed Egyptian officers over the tribute to take men at will in turns to serve for a month or more in the royal building-projects and the rest of the days [they remained] at home. These officers commanded the Israelites to build cities for Pharaoh, and the people built storage-cities for Pharaoh through this levy. When the Egyptians saw that this forced labor did not harm the Israelites, they were in dread for their own lives⁴⁴Verse 12. on account of them. They decreed that all Egyptians force the Israelites to serve them,⁴⁵Verse 13. so that any Egyptian who needed work done had the authority to take from them men to do his work. This is the meaning of the verse, And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigor.⁴⁵Verse 13.
They furthermore decreed against them that they do hard work in mortar and in brick.⁴⁶Verse 14. Ramban now proceeds to show how all the Israelites — not only those forced into labor for the king’s building-projects — were afflicted. It is necessary to recall the full text: And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field; in all their service, wherein they made them serve with rigor (Verses 13-14). Ramban understands the term “Egyptians” here as referring to the whole population. Further in the text, Ramban will suggest another interpretation. Whereas at first the officers would give them the bricks and the men of the forced labor would erect the buildings, they now conscripted the entire Israelite people into the work, commanding them to bring the earth, make the mortar with their hands and feet while only the straw was given to them from the king’s house, and give the bricks to the men of the forced labor engaged in the construction of the buildings. Every other manner of hard service in the field for Pharaoh and the Egyptians — such as excavations and the removal of dung — were all imposed upon them. In addition, they subjugated them, pressing them not to rest while beating and cursing them. This is the sense of the expression, in all their service, wherein they made them serve with rigor.⁴⁶Verse 14. Ramban now proceeds to show how all the Israelites — not only those forced into labor for the king’s building-projects — were afflicted. It is necessary to recall the full text: And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field; in all their service, wherein they made them serve with rigor (Verses 13-14). Ramban understands the term “Egyptians” here as referring to the whole population. Further in the text, Ramban will suggest another interpretation.
The king supported them with sparing bread,⁴⁷Isaiah 30:20. as is customary for those who work in his service. This is the purport of those lusting persons⁴⁸Numbers 11:4. who said, We remember the fish, which we were wont to eat in Egypt for nought; the cucumbers, etc.⁴⁹Ibid., Verse 5. Fish are very abundant in Egypt, and by command of the king, the Israelites would obtain them from those who caught them. They would also take cucumbers and melons from the vegetable-gardens,⁴⁹Ibid., Verse 5. no one putting them to shame, for such was the king’s command.
But our Rabbis have said:⁵⁰Mechilta, Bachodesh, end of Chapter 5. “The Israelites were servants to kings, but not servants to servants.” If so, the verse, And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigor,⁴⁵Verse 13. alludes to Pharaoh’s officers of the tribute, [mentioned above in Verse 11].

מיסים, typically one of the words with double consonants, the singular being מס and the plural requiring a dagesh in the letter ס to show there really ought to have been two letters ס in the middle. Similar examples are found in Leviticus 2,6 where the line פתות אותה פתים is spelled with the dagesh in the letter ת of the word פתים as being derived from פת it would require two such consonants in the plural.

למען ענותו, so that as an alternative they will agree to emigrate from our land.

וישימו עליו שרי מסים, They set taskmasters over them, etc. Where was the superior intelligence in applying brute force to the Jewish people? This was not an act of wisdom! Besides, why did the Jews appear to have accepted this procedure without protest? Why did the people who were famed for employing their brains suddenly become bricklayers? The sages in Sotah 11 describe the enslavement of the Jewish population as having occurred progressively; they were sweet-talked into volunteering their services for patritotic reasons until they suddenly found their labour not only as being taken for granted but they could not withdraw it from their superiors. This whole process must have started somewhow. We must assume therefore that before appointing taskmasters, the Egyptians appealed to the Israelites to demonstrate patriotism in return for all the good the Egyptians had done for them during the previous century.

שרי מסים, “taskmasters;” Jewish officials who would select men from among their people whom they considered as fit to perform hard physical labour at the command of the King. In turn, Pharaoh appointed officials of his own to supervise the activities of these Jewish taskmasters. The taskmasters would designate what precisely these servants were to do and where, in this case that they were to build fortified cities by means of laying the bricks for the buildings involved. When the Egyptian overseers became aware that this stratagem did not slow down the birth rate of the Israelites, they decreed that Egyptians generally were allowed to impose all kinds of menial labour on Israelites whom they chose for that purpose. This is why the Torah speaks of the Egyptians generally enslaving the Israelites, i.e.ויעבידו מצרים את בני ישראל בפרך, “the Egyptians (man in the street) enslaved the Israelites imposing harsh conditions.” They added a new element to the hardship by not only making the Israelites build with bricks supplied by them, but by expecting them to also make the bricks themselves. An additional hardship imposed was that they were made to perform labour in the fields, something the Israelites had not been trained to do. This was not constructive work such as sowing and planting, but digging canals, reservoirs, etc. The Torah emphasizes that the conditions under which all these tasks were performed were quite intolerable, and the food supplied by the king for these labourers was minimal and unappetizing. We can understand how ungrateful the Israelites who had been redeemed from such conditions must have been when they longingly looked back on that period in Numbers 11,5 implying that the only redeeming feature of the fish that Pharaoh had supplied had been that they did not have to catch the fish or pay for them. Similarly, gourds, melons, garlic and other low ranking produce they had been able to help themselves to as their staple diet in the fields in which they had been made to work. Our sages view the word לפרעה, “for Pharaoh,” in our verse as meaning that they consoled themselves by being slaves of Pharaoh, instead of slaves of Pharaoh’s slaves. If so, we must understand the line ויעבידו מצרים את בני ישראל as referring back to the phrase וישימו עליו שרי מסים, “they imposed taskmasters upon them.”

[The burdens] of the Egyptians. Rashi is answering the question: It should have said to oppress him with his burden, or to oppress them with their burdens. [Instead of to oppress him with their burdens.]

V. 11. Man erklärte die Juden im ganzen als ein Objekt des Fiskus, aus welchem der Staat so viel als möglich Geld zu machen suchen solle. Es waren ja "nicht hergehörige Fremde", denen man für die Luft, die man sie atmen ließ, jeden beliebigen Preis abfordern konnte. "Man übergab sie daher dem Fiskus." — סבל ,סבלתם ist nicht zunächst eine Last, die man auflegt, um jemanden zu drücken, sondern damit das auferlegte Objekt getragen und versorgt werde. Es liegt somit in dem Ausdrucke nichts Feindseliges. Verwandt ists mit ספל, Schale, in der etwas getragen wird; סבלות sind somit Lasten, die in der Form auferlegt werden, als von dem Staatsbedürfnis gebotene Zwecke. Der wirkliche Zweck war jedoch למען ענותו: das Judenvolk soll nicht zu übermütig werden, darum muss man unter Rechtsformen Plackereien für es ersinnen.

ערי מסכנות, “cities for storing goods.” In the Talmud, tractate Sotah folio 11, there are two opinions offered concerning the word מסכנות, One derives it from סכנה, hazard, danger, and accordingly concludes that anyone engaging in building something endangers himself. The other opinion derives it from מסכן, a poor person, suggesting that Pharaoh’s objective was to impoverish the Hebrews by making them do this kind of labour.

למען ענותו בסבלותם, ‘in order to oppress them with forced labour;” in this instance this is a veiled reference to diminishing the labourers’ ability of engaging in marital intercourse due to being overworked. [The Egyptians’ purpose was to control the Jewish birthrate explosion. Ed.] We find an example of the use of the verb ענה in this context in Genesis 31,50 where Lavan warns Yaakov against denying his daughters marital relations by sleeping with other women instead. Our sages also used this expression in this context when they are quoted as accusing the Egyptians of doing this in the Haggadah of Passover. It is paraphrased there as

מסים has the meaning of tribute (מס), a forced levy of labour, so that שרי מסים are the officers who exact the tribute of labour from them. And what was this tribute? That they should build store-cities for Pharaoh.

מסכנות, storages. You find the word as סוכן in the singular mode, in the same sense in Isaiah 22,15.

ויבן ערי מסכנות, they volunteered to accept as a form of taxation to build these storage cities for Pharaoh to prove their loyalty to Egypt.

They strengthened and fortified them. [If Bnei Yisrael built new cities] then the verse should have written ויבן את פיתום ואת רעמסס לערי מסכנות (And they built Pisom and Ramseis for supply cities). Since it is written “ ויבן ערי מסכנות (And they built supply cities),” this implies that Pisom and Ramseis already existed and Bnei Yisrael only strengthened them. (Re”m)

The plain meaning of the verse, however, seems to be that force was used to make the Israelites become bricklayers. The words: "let us outsmart them" must therefore not be applied to the details of the enslavement but to the drowning of Israelite babies in the sea as discussed by the Midrash.

סכן ,ערי מסכנות. Siehe (Bereschit 19, 4) מסכנות: Veranstaltungen, durch welche für etwa eintretende Fälle vorgesorgt werden soll: Magazinstädte. Wären das vielleicht Städte zur Aufbewahrung der durch Josef zum Wohl des Staates eingeführten Naturalienabgaben, wodurch möglichen "Notjahren", "Hungerjahren" (מסכנות) vorsorglich vorgebeugt werden sollte, so lag zugleich darin ein doppelter unendlicher Hohn. — Zum Bau einer Stadt gehören die verschiedensten Handwerkstätigkeiten, die somit alle von ihnen zu beschaffen waren. Es waren dies übrigens Staatsbauten, sie wurden für "Pharao" gebaut.

פיתום, name of one of the cities the Hebrews built; according to the Talmud there, so named as it was built near an abyss, threatening to bury its builders.

פרישות דרך ארץ, “abstention from marital relations.”

למען ענותו בסבלותם TO AFFLICT THEM WITH THEIR BURDENS — i. e. the burdens of the Egyptians.

At first glance, the words "in order to oppress them" seem superfluous; the intent was clear without these words. We must also analyse why the Torah needed to add the word בסבלותם, "during their forced labour." What precisely is this word meant to exclude?

רעמסס, name of the second city, symbolising the fact that the first city they had built had completely collapsed. Our author has difficulty in understanding this interpretation, seeing that the Torah had described the building of having been the result of פרך, understood as an acronym for פה רך, ‘with a soft tongue,’ i.e. Pharaoh having lured the Hebrews to volunteer to build fortifications, appealing to their patriotism, etc., before gradually becoming far more demanding. At the beginning he paid for each brick made, so that the Hebrews stood in line to participate in the project.

ערי מסכנות — Translate this as the Targum does: CITIES WHICH ARE PLACES FOR TREASURES; similarly we have, (Isaiah 22:15) “Go, get thes unto this steward (הסוכן)” — the treasurer appointed over the stores (Exodus Rabbah 2:1).

Perhaps the shrewdness of the Egyptians can be understood thus: Pharaoh no doubt had a team of engineers and builders who were civil servants employed in the construction of towns, etc. Such engineers were known as Mass. The word occurs in that context in Kings I 5,27. The 30.000 people described there as מס were the ones appointed over the total work force of over 150.000 described as doing the preparatory work for building the Holy Temple. Pharaoh appointed such people to guide the inexperienced Israelites in their labours. The Israelites were not able to object to this as the fact that they were being bossed by qualified engineers was not demeaning seeing they themselves were novices in that field. The Torah adds that the intention of the Egyptians in appointing these engineers as taskmasters was not because of their superior skills as the Israelites assumed, but to assert progressively harsher pressures and discipline on the Israelite labourers. The Egyptians withheld vital data from the Israelites without which the tasks allotted to the Israelite labourers could not be successfully completed. The Israelites therefore depended on the help of these engineers which gradually turned from help to oppression. This is what our sages had in mind when they spoke about the Egyptians sweet-talking the Israelites into forced labour, i.e. פה דך turned in to פרך.

את פתם ואת רעמסס PITHOM AND RAMESES — These cities already existed but were not adapted originally for this purpose; now they strengthened them and fortified them to serve as store-cities.

Some commentators explain: Because it is written et (a preposition indicating action upon the object,) Pithom and et Raamses," it implies that they were already in the world before the Israelites built them. As if you say that they were named Pithom and Raamses after they built them, it should have written, "And they built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Raamses..." But this is not correct. For behold, we find (Genesis 10:11), "and he built et Nineveh and et Rechoboth the city and et Kalach," the explanation of which is Nineveh and Rechoboth the city, that exist in the world now. Here too [it means], Pithom and Raamses that are now in the world; and like (Genesis 2:14), "it is the one that flows east of Assyria," today - and not in those days. Rather the correct understanding of this is...