King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 16
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Observe the month of , and keep unto thy : for in the month of thy brought thee forth out of by night. Thou shalt therefore unto thy , of the flock and the herd, in the place which shall choose to place his name there. Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shalt thou eat therewith, even the bread of affliction; for thou camest forth out of the land of in haste: that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of all the days of thy life. And there shall be no leavened bread seen with thee in all thy coast seven days; neither shall there any thing of , which thou sacrificedst the first day at even, all night until the morning. Thou mayest not within any of thy , which thy giveth thee: But at the place which thy shall choose to place his name in, there thou shalt at even, at the going down of the sun, at the season that thou camest forth out of . And thou shalt roast and eat it in the place which thy shall choose: and thou shalt turn in the morning, and go unto thy tents. Six days thou shalt eat : and on the seventh day shall be a solemn to thy : thou shalt do no work therein. Seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee: begin to number the seven weeks from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn. And thou shalt keep the unto thy with a tribute of a freewill of thine hand, which thou shalt give unto thy , according as thy hath thee: And thou shalt rejoice before thy , thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maidservant, and the that is within thy , and the , and , and the , that are among you, in the place which thy hath chosen to place his name there. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in : and thou shalt observe and do these . Thou shalt observe the seven days, after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy : And thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maidservant, and the , the , and , and the , that are within thy . Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto thy in the place which shall choose: because thy shall thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thine hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice. Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before thy in the place which he shall choose; in the feast of , and in the , and in the : and they shall not appear before empty: Every man shall give as he is able, according to the of thy which he hath given thee. Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy , which thy giveth thee, throughout thy tribes: and they shall judge the people with . Thou shalt not wrest ; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of , and pervert the words of . That which is altogether shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live, and the land which thy giveth thee. Thou shalt not plant thee a grove of any trees near unto the of thy , which thou shalt make thee. Neither shalt thou set thee up any ; which thy hateth.
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.