King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 11
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Therefore thou shalt love thy , and keep his charge, and his , and his judgments, and his , alway. And know ye this day: for I speak not with your children which have not known, and which have not seen the chastisement of your , his greatness, his mighty hand, and his stretched out arm, And his miracles, and his acts, which he did in the midst of unto the king of , and unto all his land; And what he did unto the army of , unto their horses, and to their chariots; how he made the water of to overflow them as they pursued after you, and how hath destroyed them unto this day; And what he did unto you in , until ye came into this place; And what he did unto and , the sons of Eliab, the son of : how the earth opened her , and swallowed them up, and their households, and their tents, and all the substance that was in their possession, in the midst of all Israel: But your eyes have seen all the great acts of which he did. Therefore shall ye keep all which I command you this day, that ye may be strong, and go in and possess the land, whither ye go to possess it; And that ye may prolong your days in the land, which sware unto your fathers to give unto them and to their , a land that floweth with . For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of , from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy , and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs: But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the of : A land which thy careth for: the eyes of thy are always upon it, of the year even unto the end of the year. And it shall come to pass, if ye shall diligently unto my which I command you this day, to love your , and to him with all and with all your , That I will give you the of your land in his due season, the first and the , that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy , and thine oil. And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full. Take heed to yourselves, that be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and other gods, and them; And then ’s be kindled against you, and he shut up the , that there be no , and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye quickly from off the good land which giveth you. Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in and in your , and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as between your eyes. And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by , when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy : That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of upon the earth. For if ye shall diligently keep all these which I command you, to do them, to love your , to walk in all his ways, and to cleave unto him; Then will drive out all these nations from before you, and ye shall possess greater nations and mightier than yourselves. Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours: from and , from the river, the river , even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be. There shall no man be able to stand before you: for your shall lay the fear of you and the dread of you upon all the land that ye shall tread upon, as he hath said unto you. Behold, I set before you this day a and ; A , if ye of your , which I command you this day: And , if ye will not of your , but turn aside out of which I command you this day, to go after other gods, which ye have not known. And it shall come to pass, when thy hath brought thee in unto the land whither thou goest to possess it, that thou shalt put the upon , and the upon mount . Are they not on the other side Jordan, by where the sun goeth down, in the land of , which in the champaign over against , beside the plains of Moreh? For ye shall pass over Jordan to go in to possess the land which your giveth you, and ye shall possess it, and therein. And ye shall observe to do all the and judgments which I set before you this day.
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.