King James Version · The united kingdom
1 Samuel 6
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And the was in the country of the seven months. And the called for the priests and the , saying, What shall we do to the ? tell us wherewith we shall send it to his place. And they said, If ye send away the ark of the of Israel, send it not empty; but in any return him a trespass offering: then ye shall be healed, and it shall be known to you why his hand is not removed from you. Then said they, What shall be the trespass offering which we shall return to him? They answered, Five golden emerods, and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the : for one plague was on you all, and on your lords. Wherefore ye shall make of your emerods, and of your mice that mar the land; and ye shall give unto the of Israel: peradventure he will lighten his hand from off you, and from off your gods, and from off your land. Wherefore then do ye harden your , as the and hardened their ? when he had wrought wonderfully among them, did they not let the people go, and they departed? Now therefore make a new cart, and take two milch kine, on which there hath come no , and tie the kine to the cart, and bring their calves home from them: And take the , and lay it upon the cart; and put the jewels of gold, which ye return him for a trespass offering, in a coffer by the side thereof; and send it away, that it may go. And see, if it goeth up by of his own coast to , then he hath done us this great evil: but if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that smote us; it was a chance that happened to us. 10And the men did so; and took two milch kine, and tied them to the cart, and shut up their calves at home: And they laid the upon the cart, and the coffer with the mice of gold and the of their emerods. And the kine took the straight way to of , and went along the highway, lowing as they went, and turned not aside to or to the left; and the lords of the went after them unto the border of . 13And they of were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley: and they lifted up their eyes, and saw the ark, and rejoiced to see it. And the cart came into the field of Joshua, a Beth–shemite, and stood there, where there was a great stone: and they clave the wood of the cart, and offered the kine a unto . And the took down the , and the coffer that was with it, wherein the jewels of gold were, and put them on the great stone: and the men of offered and the same day unto . And when the five lords of the had seen it, they returned to the same day. And these are the golden emerods which the returned for a trespass offering unto ; for one, for one, for Askelon one, for one, for one; And the golden mice, according to the number of all the cities of the belonging to the five lords, both of fenced cities, and of country villages, even unto the great stone of , whereon they set down the : which stone remaineth unto this day in the field of Joshua, the Beth–shemite. And he smote the men of , because they had looked into the , even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men: and the people , because had smitten many of the people with a great slaughter. And the men of said, Who is able to stand before this ? and to whom shall he go up from us? And they sent to the inhabitants of Kirjath–jearim, saying, The have brought again the ; come ye down, and fetch it up to you.
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.