King James Version · The united kingdom
1 Samuel 31
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Now the fought against Israel: and the men of Israel fled from before the , and fell down slain in . And the followed hard upon and upon his sons; and the slew , and , and Malchi–shua, ’s sons. And the battle went sore against , and the archers hit him; and he was sore wounded of the archers. Then said unto his armourbearer, Draw thy , and thrust me through therewith; lest these come and thrust me through, and abuse me. But his armourbearer would not; for he was sore afraid. Therefore took a , and fell upon it. And when his armourbearer saw that was , he fell likewise upon his , and with him. So , and his three sons, and his armourbearer, and all his men, that same day together. And when the men of Israel that were on the other side of the valley, and they that were on the other side Jordan, saw that the men of Israel fled, and that and his sons were , they forsook the cities, and fled; and the came and dwelt in them. And it came to pass on the morrow, when the came to strip the slain, that they found and his three sons fallen in . And they his head, and stripped off his armour, and sent into the land of the round about, to publish it in the house of their idols, and among the people. And they put his armour in the house of : and they fastened his body to the wall of . And when the inhabitants of heard of that which the had done to ; All the valiant men arose, and went all night, and took the body of and the bodies of his sons from the wall of , and came to , and burnt them there. And they took their bones, and buried them under a tree at , and seven days.
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.