King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 15
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a . And this is the manner of the : Every creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbour shall it; he shall not exact it of his neighbour, or of his brother; because it is called ’s . Of a thou mayest exact it again: but that which is thine with thy brother thine hand shall ; when there shall be no among you; for shall greatly thee in the land which thy giveth thee for an to possess it: Only if thou carefully unto thy , to observe to do all these which I command thee this day. For thy blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee. If there be among you a man of one of thy brethren within any of thy in thy land which thy giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine , nor shut thine hand from thy brother: But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth. Beware that there be not a thought in thy , saying, The seventh year, the year of , is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy brother, and thou givest him nought; and he cry unto against thee, and it be unto thee. Thou shalt surely give him, and thine shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him: because that for this thing thy shall thee in all thy works, and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto. For shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy , and to thy needy, in thy land. And if thy brother, an man, or an woman, be sold unto thee, and thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith thy hath thee thou shalt give unto him. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of , and thy thee: therefore I command thee this thing to day. And it shall be, if he say unto thee, I will not go away from thee; because he loveth thee and thine house, because he is well with thee; Then thou shalt take an aul, and thrust it through his ear unto the door, and he shall be thy servant for ever. And also unto thy maidservant thou shalt do likewise. It shall not seem hard unto thee, when thou sendest him away free from thee; for he hath been worth a double hired servant to thee, in thee six years: and thy shall thee in all that thou doest. All the firstling males that come of thy herd and of thy flock thou shalt unto thy : thou shalt do no work with the firstling of thy bullock, nor shear the firstling of thy sheep. Thou shalt eat it before thy year by year in the place which shall choose, thou and thy household. And if there be any therein, as if it be lame, or blind, or have any ill , thou shalt not it unto thy . Thou shalt eat it within thy : the and the clean person shall eat it alike, as the roebuck, and as the hart. Only thou shalt not eat thereof; thou shalt pour it upon the ground as water.
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.