John Gill Bible Commentary

Go therefore now, and work,.... Go about your business, attend to your work, even you officers, as well as your people; work yourselves, as well as see that your people do theirs, and do not trouble me with such impertinent applications: for there shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks; the usual number of bricks, as the Vulgate Latin version has it; though in Exo 5:8, it is rendered in that version the measure of bricks, and so another word is translated by them, Exo 5:14, and perhaps both may be intended, both number and measure; that is, that it was expected and insisted on that they delivered the full number of bricks they used to make, and these of full measure; for bricks were made of different measures, as Vitruvius (p) observes; some among the bricks were of two hands' breadth, others of four, and a third sort of five. See Gill on Exo 5:7. (p) Ut supra. (Vide Vitruvium de Architectura, l. 2. c. 3. p. 46)