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In Bible times, when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, they had to make bricks for Pharaoh. If you have seen Cecil B. DeMille’s movie “The Ten Commandments”, you have some idea what I am talking about. In that movie, you could see that brick making was not an easy task. The slaves were slow, dirty, tired, and muddy. No matter how hard the slaves worked, Pharaoh tried to make things much harder. In the movie, I heard Pharaoh mention making bricks without straw, and it is found in the Bible (Ex. 5:18).

When I was small I thought, “What in the world does that man mean when he say bricks without straw?” I had no idea that straw was included with making bricks.

According to Bible history, brick makers used dirt or clay. They mixed it with water, and they stomped in the mud with their bare feet. They used a hoe to stir the ingredients. I have learned that the brick makers often added straw to mud. The reason for this was the straw helped to hold the mud together. Bricks were baked by the sun or put into an oven. This gave the bricks greater strength and made them harder. The bricks were also shaped and dried.

It is said that mud bricks are still made with straw. When I look at the bricks on my house, I can not imagine any straw. I never really thought about how bricks were made. Whenever I thought of bricks as a child, I thought of them as a natural rock that was already made by God. That was because I had no knowledge about masonry. Now that I have some knowledge about brick, I see mortar, clay, and concrete. I suppose there are different types of bricks, and I suppose they can be made different ways.