FORCED LABOUR, corvée — conscripted, unpaid work owed to a ruler or state; a levy paid in bodies rather than money. ⚠️ The word carries a bitter history in the Bible. It is what EGYPT imposed on Israel — 'they set taskmasters over them… to afflict them with their burdens' (Exodus 1:11 uses the cognate) — the very thing the exodus was a rescue FROM. So when Judges 1 says that, once Israel 'grew strong,' the tribes put the surviving Canaanites to MAS rather than driving them out (1:28, 30, 33, 35), the irony is deliberate and heavy: a people redeemed from forced labour imposing it, and doing so as a COMPROMISE with the command they were failing to keep. Solomon will later levy the same MAS on the remaining Canaanites (1 Kings 9:21) — and, disastrously, on Israel itself, which splits the kingdom. KJV 'tribute'; ESV/NIV 'forced labor.' → first discussed at Judges 1:28