Charles Ellicott Commentary Exodus 1:14

"and they made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field, all their service, wherein they made them serve with rigor." — Exodus 1:14 (ASV)

In mortar and in brick. —It has been questioned whether the Egyptians used brick as a material for building. No doubt temples, palaces, and pyramids were ordinarily of stone; but the employment of brick for walls, fortresses, and houses, especially in the Delta, is well attested. (See the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund for July, 1880, pp. 137, 139, 143, etc.) Pyramids, too, were sometimes of brick (Herod. ii. 136). The manufacture of bricks by foreigners, employed (like the Israelites) as public slaves, is represented by the kings on their monuments.

All manner of service in the field. —Josephus speaks of their being employed to dig canals (Ant. Jud. ii. 9, § 1), and there is a trace in Deuteronomy 11:10 of other labors connected with irrigation having been assigned to them. Such labors, under the hot sun of Egypt, are exhausting and dangerous to health.

And all their service ... was with rigour. Rather, besides all their other service, which they made them serve with rigour.