King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 18
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The priests the , and all the tribe of , shall have no part nor with Israel: they shall eat the of made by , and his . Therefore shall they have no among their brethren: is their , as he hath said unto them. And this shall be the priest’s due from the people, from them that offer a , whether it be ox or sheep; and they shall give unto the priest the shoulder, and the two cheeks, and the maw. The firstfruit also of thy corn, of thy , and of thine oil, and the first of the fleece of thy sheep, shalt thou give him. For thy hath chosen him out of all thy tribes, to stand to minister in the name of , him and his sons for ever. And if a come from any of thy out of all Israel, where he sojourned, and come with all the of his unto the place which shall choose; Then he shall minister in the name of his , as all his brethren the do, which stand there before . They shall have like portions to eat, beside that which cometh of the sale of his patrimony. When thou art come into the land which thy giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the , or that useth , or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an unto : and because of these thy doth drive them out from before thee. Thou shalt be perfect with thy . For these nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times, and unto : but as for thee, thy hath not suffered thee so to do. thy will raise up unto thee a from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall ; According to all that thou desiredst of thy in in the day of , saying, Let me not hear again my , neither let me see this great any more, that I not. And said unto me, They have well spoken that which they have spoken. I will raise them up a from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his ; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him. But the , which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that shall . And if thou say in thine , How shall we know the word which hath not spoken? When a speaketh in the name of , if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which hath not spoken, but the hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.
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.