King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 10
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At that time said unto me, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first, and come up unto me into the mount, and make thee an ark of wood. And I will write on the tables the words that were in the first tables which thou brakest, and thou shalt put them in the ark. And I made an ark of shittim wood, and hewed two tables of stone like unto the first, and went up into the mount, having the two tables in mine hand. And he wrote on the tables, according to the first writing, , which spake unto you in the mount out of the midst of the in the day of : and gave them unto me. And I turned myself and came down from the mount, and put the tables in the ark which I had made; and there they be, as commanded me. And the took their journey from of the children of to Mosera: there , and there he was buried; and Eleazar his son ministered in the priest’s office in his stead. From thence they journeyed unto Gudgodah; and from Gudgodah to Jotbath, a land of rivers of waters. At that time separated the tribe of , to bear the of , to stand before to minister unto him, and to in his name, unto this day. Wherefore hath no part nor with his brethren; is his , according as thy promised him. And I stayed in the mount, according to the first time, forty days and forty nights; and hearkened unto me at that time also, and would not destroy thee. And said unto me, Arise, take thy journey before the people, that they may go in and possess the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give unto them. And now, Israel, what doth thy require of thee, but to thy , to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to thy with all thy and with all thy , To keep of , and his , which I command thee this day for thy good? Behold, the and the is ’s thy , the earth also, with all that therein is. Only had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their after them, even you above all people, as it is this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of , and be no more . For your is of gods, and of lords, a great , a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward: He doth execute the of and , and loveth the , in giving him food and raiment. Love ye therefore the : for ye were strangers in the land of . Thou shalt thy ; him shalt thou , and to him shalt thou cleave, and by his name. He is thy , and he is thy , that hath done for thee these great and terrible things, which thine eyes have seen. Thy fathers went down into with threescore and ten persons; and now thy hath made thee as the stars of for multitude.
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 · Egypt and Sinai, 1450 BC to 1200 BC ›
Israel in and then out of Egypt, at a period when Egypt was an imperial power that also controlled Canaan. The nation is formed as a people with a law before it has any land.
- Egypt
- The New Kingdom at its imperial peak, with a professional army, a chariot corps, and control reaching up through Canaan. Ramesses II reigns for sixty-six years and covers the country in monuments to himself. Egyptian power in this period is the reason Canaan is garrisoned rather than free.
- The Hittites
- The other superpower, in what is now Turkey, and Egypt's rival for the Levant. The two fight the largest chariot battle of the ancient world at Kadesh, then sign a treaty whose text survives from both sides. Hittite treaty form, with its historical prologue, stipulations, witnesses, blessings, and curses, is the shape the Sinai covenant takes, which is one of the stronger arguments for the antiquity of that material.
- The Aegean
- Mycenaean Greece: warrior kings in stone citadels at Mycenae and Pylos, keeping palace accounts in Linear B. The world of the Trojan War stories, whatever lies behind them.
- Further afield
- The Shang dynasty in China is casting extraordinary bronzes and writing questions to its ancestors on ox bones. In Mesoamerica the Olmec are beginning the first civilisation of the Americas.