and God will help you."

So back to Egypt he went. First, he undertook to rally his own people,
promising the help of their God, Jehovah. It was a dangerous
undertaking that he proposed. The kings of Egypt were accustomed to
make short work of those who resisted their authority. Moreover, these
Hebrews had been slaves for years, and their spirits might have been
cowed and broken. Yet they believed in Moses and his assurances and
accepted him as their leader.

Soon thereafter Moses and his brother Aaron went boldly to the palace
of the Pharaoh and declared to him that Jehovah, the God of the
Hebrews, had commanded that the Hebrews be allowed to hold a religious
festival in the desert to offer sacrifices unto him as their God. The
plan no doubt was that the people should escape once they were outside
the boundaries of Egypt; Moses evidently considered any method
justifiable in the effort to outwit the oppressor. But the Pharaoh
answered, "Who is Jehovah that I should hearken to his voice to let
Israel go?" The request was sharply refused. It is surprising that
Moses himself was not arrested and imprisoned on the spot. Perhaps he
still had friends in the Egyptian court. Or perhaps the Egyptians had
a certain reverence for him as a messenger from a god, even though
they did not grant his demands.

=Bricks without straw.=--At first it seemed that Moses had failed. For
instead of the longed-for freedom, the toiling Hebrews found that a
still heavier burden of work was laid upon them. In the manufacture of
sun-dried brick it is necessary to mix straw with the clay in the
molds, the fibers giving a tougher quality to the product. Previously
the straw for this purpose had been furnished by the Egyptians. But