King James Version · The united kingdom
1 Chronicles 20
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And it came to pass, that after the year was expired, at the time that kings go out to battle, led forth the of the army, and wasted the country of , and came and besieged . But tarried at . And smote , and destroyed it. And took the of their king from off his head, and found it to weigh a of gold, and there were precious stones in it; and it was set upon ’s head: and he brought also exceeding much spoil out of the city. And he brought out the people that were in it, and cut them with saws, and with harrows of iron, and with axes. Even so dealt with all the cities of . And and all the people returned to . And it came to pass after this, that there arose war at with the ; at which time Sibbechai the slew Sippai, that was of the children of the giant: and they were subdued. And there was war again with the ; and the son of slew Lahmi the brother of the , whose spear was like a weaver’s beam. And yet again there was war at , where was a man of great stature, whose fingers and toes were four and twenty, six on each hand, and six on each foot: and he also was the son of the giant. But when he defied Israel, the son of Shimea ’s brother slew him. These were born unto the giant in ; and they fell by the hand of , and by the hand of his servants.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · The united kingdom, 1050 BC to 931 BC ›
Saul, David, and Solomon. A rare window when both Egypt and Mesopotamia are weak, which is how a small kingdom in the corridor between them could briefly become a regional power.
- The power vacuum
- This is the whole political explanation for the united kingdom. Egypt is fragmented, Assyria is recovering but still local, the Hittites are gone, and nobody is in a position to object to a strong state in the corridor. It lasts about a century, and Israel's golden age fits exactly inside it.
- Phoenicia
- Tyre under Hiram is the commercial power of the coast, and supplies the cedar, the craftsmen, and the shipping for Solomon's building programme. The alliance is trade, not charity: Israel had grain and a land route, Tyre had timber and ships.
- Egypt
- Weak enough that a pharaoh gives a daughter in marriage to an Israelite king, which is the opposite of Egyptian practice in stronger centuries. Late in the era it recovers under a new house, and Shishak will invade within five years of Solomon's death.
- Further afield
- Greece is still in its dark age but beginning to recover, and will adopt the Phoenician alphabet within a century or two. Carthage is founded by settlers from Tyre by tradition in 814 BC. In the Americas the Olmec centre shifts to La Venta.