Exodus 1:9-14

9He said to his people, “Look, the people of Bnei-Yisrael are too numerous and too powerful for us.

10Come, we must deal shrewdly with them, or else they will grow even more numerous, so that if war breaks out, they may join our enemies, fight against us, and then escape from the land.”

11So they set slave masters over them to afflict them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Raamses as storage cities for Pharaoh.

12But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread. So the Egyptians dreaded the presence of Bnei-Yisrael.

13They worked them harshly,

14and made their lives bitter with hard labor with mortar and brick, doing all sorts of work in the fields. In all their labors they worked them with cruelty.