Downfall of the King of Babylon

³ When the Lord has given you rest from your pain and turmoil and the hard service with which you were made to serve,^{(A) 4} you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon:

³ Then the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help, for he had nine hundred chariots of iron and had oppressed the Israelites cruelly twenty years.^(A)

¹⁵ Then the Israelite supervisors came to Pharaoh and cried, “Why do you treat your servants like this? ¹⁶ No straw is given to your servants, yet they say to us, ‘Make bricks!’ Look how your servants are beaten! But the fault is with you.”^{[a] 17} He said, “You are lazy, lazy; that is why you say, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.’^{(A) 18} Go now and work, for no straw shall be given you, but you shall still deliver the same number of bricks.” ¹⁹ The Israelite supervisors saw that they were in trouble when they were told, “You shall not lessen your daily number of bricks.”

⁶ That same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people, as well as their supervisors,^{(A) 7} “You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as before; let them go and gather straw for themselves. ⁸ But you shall require of them the same quantity of bricks as they have made previously; do not diminish it, for they are lazy; that is why they cry, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.’^(B)