World English Bible · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 11
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Therefore you shall love your , and keep his instructions, his , his , and his , always. Know this day—for I don't speak with your children who have not known, and who have not seen the chastisement of your , his greatness, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm, his signs, and his works, which he did in the middle of to the king of , and to all his land; and what he did to the army of , to their horses, and to their chariots; how he made the water of to overflow them as they pursued you, and how has destroyed them to this day; and what he did to you in until you came to this place; and what he did to and , the sons of Eliab, the son of —how the earth opened its and swallowed them up, with their households, their tents, and every living thing that followed them, in the middle of all Israel; but your eyes have seen all of great work which he did. Therefore you shall keep the entire which I command you today, that you may be strong, and go in and possess the land that you go over to possess; and that you may prolong your days in the land which to your fathers to give to them and to their , a and honey. For the land, where you go in to possess isn't like the land of that you came out of, where you sowed and watered it with your foot, as a garden of herbs; but the land that you go over to possess is a land of hills and valleys which drinks water from the of , a land which your cares for. your eyes are always on it, of the year even to the end of the year. It shall happen, if you shall listen diligently to my which I command you today, to love your , and to him with all and with all your , that I will give the for your land , the and the , that you may gather in your grain, your , and your oil. I will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full. Be careful, lest be deceived, and you turn away to other gods and them; and be kindled against you, and he shut up so that there is no , and the land doesn't yield its fruit; and you quickly from off the good land which gives you. Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in and in your . You shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by , when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your ; that your days and your children's days may be multiplied in the land which to your fathers to give them, as the days of above the earth. For if you shall diligently keep all these which I command you—to do them, to love your , to walk in all his ways, and to cling to him— then will drive out all these nations from before you, and you shall dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourselves. Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours: from and , from the river, the river , even to the western sea shall be your border. No man will be able to stand before you. your will lay the fear of you and the dread of you on all the land that you tread on, as he has spoken to you. Behold, I set before you today a and : the , if you listen to of your , which I command you today; and the , if you do not listen to of your , but turn away out of which I command you today, to go after other gods which you have not known. It shall happen, when your brings you into the land that you go to possess, that you shall set the on , and the on Mount . Aren't they beyond , behind of the going down of the sun, in the land of who in the near , beside the oaks of Moreh? For you are to pass over to go in to possess the land which your gives you, and you shall possess it and in it. You shall observe to do all the and the which I set before you today.
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. 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.