All overworked people know the refrain: More bricks, less straw.
And what’s interesting to note in Pharaoh’s reaction is that he assumes that a request for worship is symptomatic of laziness.
What I find interesting in all this is how the worship of God is perceived to interrupt the work and quotas demanded by Pharaoh. The tension, at least here in the beginning of Exodus, isn’t the clash between slavery and liberation but the clash between worship and work.
