Sotah 11B

בפרך״, רבי אלעזר אמר: בפה רך. רבי שמואל בר נחמני אמר: בפריכה.

with rigor [befarekh]” (Exodus 1:13). R' Elazar says: The word befarekh is a conjugation of the words: With a soft mouth [bifeh rakh], as the Egyptians enticed the Jewish people into slavery, gradually subjugating them until they had lost their freedom completely. R' Shmuel bar Naḥmani says: The word befarekh should be understood as: With crushing [bifrikha], as the Egyptians subjugated Israel with backbreaking labor.

״וימררו את חייהם בעבדה קשה בחמר ובלבנים וגו׳״, אמר רבא: בתחילה ״בחומר ובלבנים״, ולבסוף ״ובכל עבודה בשדה״.

The next verse states: “And they made their lives bitter through hard service, with mortar and brick, and with every laborious service in the field” (Exodus 1:14). Rava says: The verse mentions specifically mortar and brick and then all forms of labor, as initially the Egyptians had them work with mortar and bricks, and ultimately they subjugated them “and with every laborious service in the field.”

״את כל עבדתם אשר עבדו בהם בפרך״, אמר רבי שמואל בר נחמני אמר רבי יונתן: שהיו מחליפין מלאכת אנשים לנשים ומלאכת נשים לאנשים. ולמאן דאמר נמי התם בפה רך, הכא ודאי בפריכה.

The verse concludes: “In all their service, wherein they made them serve with rigor” (Exodus 1:14). R' Shmuel bar Naḥmani says that R' Yonatan says: The meaning of befarekh is that the Egyptians would exchange the responsibilities of men and women, giving men’s work to women and women’s work to men, requiring everyone to do work to which they were unaccustomed. And even according to the one who says that there, in the previous verse, bifarekh indicates that the Egyptians enslaved the Jews with a soft mouth, here, in this verse, which describes the physical hardship of the labor, the word befarekh certainly means with crushing labor.

דרש רב עוירא: בשכר נשים צדקניות שהיו באותו הדור נגאלו ישראל ממצרים. בשעה שהולכות לשאוב מים, הקדוש ברוך הוא מזמן להם דגים קטנים בכדיהן, ושואבות מחצה מים ומחצה דגים, ובאות ושופתות שתי קדירות, אחת של חמין ואחת של דגים.

§ Rav Avira taught: In the merit of the righteous women that were in that generation, the Jewish people were redeemed from Egypt. He tells of their righteous actions: At the time when these women would go to the river to draw water, God would materialize for them small fish that would enter into their pitchers, and they would therefore draw pitchers that were half filled with water and half filled with fish. And they would then come and place two pots on the fire, one pot of hot water for washing their husbands and one pot of fish with which to feed them.