World English Bible · The united kingdom
1 Samuel 21
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
Then came to to the priest. came to meet trembling, and said to him, "Why are you alone, and no man with you?" said to the priest, "The king has commanded me to do something, and has said to me, 'Let no one know anything about the business about which I send you, and what I have commanded you. I have sent the young men to a certain place.' Now therefore what is under your hand? Please give me five loaves of bread in my hand, or whatever is available." The priest answered , and said, "I have no common bread, but there is bread; if only the young men have kept themselves from women." answered the priest, and said to him, "Truly, women have been kept from us as usual these three days. When I came out, the vessels of the young men were , though it was only a common journey. How much more then today shall their vessels be ?" So the priest gave him bread; for there was there but the show bread that was taken from before , to be replaced with hot bread in the day when it was taken away. Now a certain man of the servants of was there that day, detained before ; and his name was the , the best of the herdsmen who belonged to . 8 said to , "Isn't there here under your hand spear or ? For I haven't brought my or my weapons with me, because the king's business required haste." The priest said, "Behold, of the , whom you killed in the valley of Elah, is here wrapped in a cloth behind the . If you would like to take that, take it, for there is no other except that here." said, "There is none like that. Give it to me." arose and fled that day for fear of , and went to the king of . The servants of said to him, "Isn't this the king of the land? Didn't they sing to one another about him in dances, saying, ' has slain his thousands, and his ten thousands'?" laid up these words in , and was very afraid of the king of . He changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands, and scribbled on the doors of the , and let his spittle fall down on his beard. Then said to his servants, "Look, you see the man is insane. Why then have you brought him to me? 15Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my ? Should this fellow come into my house?"
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. 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.