King James Version · The united kingdom
2 Samuel 17
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Moreover said unto , Let me now choose out twelve thousand men, and I will arise and pursue after this night: And I will come upon him while he is weary and weak handed, and will make him afraid: and all the people that are with him shall flee; and I will smite the king only: And I will bring back all the people unto thee: the man whom thou seekest is as if all returned: so all the people shall be in peace. And the saying pleased well, and all the . Then said , Call now the also, and let us hear likewise what he saith. 6And when was come to , spake unto him, saying, hath spoken after this manner: shall we do after his saying? if not; speak thou. And said unto , The that hath given is not good at this time. For, said , thou knowest thy and his men, that they be , and they be chafed in their , as a bear robbed of her whelps in the field: and thy is a man of war, and will not lodge with the people. Behold, he is hid now in some pit, or in some other place: and it will come to pass, when some of them be overthrown at the first, that whosoever heareth it will say, There is a slaughter among the people that follow . And he also that is valiant, whose is as of a lion, shall utterly melt: for all Israel knoweth that thy is a mighty man, and they which be with him are valiant men. Therefore I that all Israel be generally gathered unto thee, from Dan even to Beer–sheba, as the sand that is by the sea for multitude; and that thou go to battle in thine own person. So shall we come upon him in some place where he shall be found, and we will upon him as the falleth on the ground: and of him and of all the men that are with him there shall not be left so much as one. Moreover, if he be gotten into a city, then shall all Israel bring ropes to that city, and we will draw it into the river, until there be not one small stone found there. And and all the men of Israel said, The of the is better than the of . For had appointed to defeat the good of , to the intent that might bring evil upon . Then said unto and to the priests, Thus and thus did and the ; and thus and thus have I counselled. Now therefore send quickly, and tell , saying, Lodge not this night in the plains of , but speedily pass over; lest the king be swallowed up, and all the people that are with him. Now and stayed by ; for they might not be seen to come into the city: and a wench went and told them; and they went and told king . Nevertheless a lad saw them, and told : but they went both of them away quickly, and came to a man’s house in Bahurim, which had a well in his court; whither they went down. And the woman took and spread a covering over the well’s , and spread ground corn thereon; and the thing was not known. And when ’s servants came to the woman to the house, they said, Where is and ? And the woman said unto them, They be gone over the brook of water. And when they had sought and could not find them, they returned to . And it came to pass, after they were departed, that they came up out of the well, and went and told king , and said unto , Arise, and pass quickly over the water: for thus hath counselled against you. Then arose, and all the people that were with him, and they passed over Jordan: by the morning there lacked not one of them that was not gone over Jordan. And when saw that his was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and , and was buried in the of his . Then came to . And passed over Jordan, he and all the men of Israel with him. And made captain of the host instead of : which was a man’s son, whose name was Ithra an , that went in to the daughter of , sister to ’s mother. So Israel and pitched in the land of . And it came to pass, when was come to , that Shobi the son of of of , and the son of of Lo–debar, and the Gileadite of Rogelim, Brought beds, and basons, and earthen vessels, and wheat, and barley, and flour, and parched corn, and beans, and lentiles, and parched pulse, And honey, and butter, and sheep, and cheese of kine, for , and for the people that were with him, to eat: for they said, The people is hungry, and weary, and thirsty, in .
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.