And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, in which they made them serve, was with rigor.
All Commentaries on Exodus 1:14 Go To Exodus 1
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
We have been led out of Egypt where we were serving the devil as a pharaoh, where we were doing works of clay amid earthly desires, and we were laboring much in them. For Christ cried out to us, as if we were making bricks, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened.” Led out of here, we were led over through baptism as through the Red Sea—red for this reason, because consecrated by the blood of Christ—when all our enemies who were assailing us were dead, that is, when our sins have been wiped out.