World English Bible · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 14
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You are the children of your . You shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for . For you are a people to your , and has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, above all peoples who are on the of the earth. You shall not eat any thing. These are the animals which you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, 5the deer, the gazelle, the roebuck, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope, and the chamois. Every animal that parts the hoof, and has the hoof split in two and chews the cud, among the animals, you may eat. Nevertheless these you shall not eat of them that chew the cud, or of those who have the hoof split: the camel, the hare, and the rabbit. Because they chew the cud but don't part the hoof, they are to you. The pig, because it has a split hoof but doesn't chew the cud, is to you. You shall not eat their meat. You shall not touch their carcasses. These you may eat of all that are in the waters: you may eat whatever has fins and scales. 10You shall not eat whatever doesn't have fins and scales. It is to you. 11Of all clean birds you may eat. But these are they of which you shall not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the osprey, 13the red kite, the falcon, the kite of any kind, 14every raven of any kind, the ostrich, the owl, the seagull, the hawk of any kind, 16the little owl, the great owl, the horned owl, 17the pelican, the vulture, the cormorant, 18the stork, the heron after its kind, the hoopoe, and the bat. All winged creeping things are to you. They shall not be eaten. 20Of all clean birds you may eat. You shall not eat of anything that dies of itself. You may give it to the living among you who is within your , that he may eat it; or you may sell it to a ; for you are a people to your . You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk. You shall surely all the increase of , that which comes out of the field year by year. You shall eat before your , in the place which he chooses to cause his name to , the of your grain, of your , and of your oil, and of your herd and of your flock; that you may learn to your always. If is too long for you, so that you are not able to carry it because the place which your shall choose to set his name there is too far from you, when your blesses you, 25then you shall turn it into money, bind up the money in your hand, and shall go to the place which your shall choose. You shall trade the money for whatever your : for cattle, or for sheep, or for , or for , or for whatever your asks of you. You shall eat there before your , and you shall rejoice, you and your household. You shall not forsake the who is within your , for he has no nor with you. At the end of every three years you shall bring all the of your increase in the same year, and shall store it within your . The , because he has no nor with you, as well as the living among you, , and the who are within your shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that your may you in all the work of your hand which you do.
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.