10 Come, let’s deal shrewdly with them; otherwise they will multiply further, and when war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.”f 11 So the Egyptians assigned taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor.g They built Pithom and Rameses as supply citiesh for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread so that the Egyptians came to dreadC the Israelites. 13 They worked the Israelites ruthlesslyi 14 and made their lives bitter with difficult labor in brick and mortar and in all kinds of fieldwork. They ruthlessly imposed all this work on them.j