King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 19
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When thy hath the nations, whose land thy giveth thee, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their cities, and in their houses; Thou shalt separate three cities for thee in the midst of thy land, which thy giveth thee to possess it. Thou shalt prepare thee a way, and divide the coasts of thy land, which thy giveth thee to , into three parts, that every slayer may flee thither. And this is the case of the slayer, which shall flee thither, that he may live: Whoso killeth his neighbour ignorantly, whom he hated not in time past; As when a man goeth into the wood with his neighbour to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slippeth from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbour, that he ; he shall flee unto one of those cities, and live: Lest the of pursue the slayer, while is hot, and overtake him, because is long, and him; whereas he was not worthy of , inasmuch as he hated him not in time past. 7Wherefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt separate three cities for thee. And if thy enlarge thy coast, as he hath unto thy fathers, and give thee all the land which he promised to give unto thy fathers; If thou shalt keep all these to do them, which I command thee this day, to love thy , and to walk ever in his ways; then shalt thou add three cities more for thee, beside these three: That innocent be not shed in thy land, which thy giveth thee for an , and so be upon thee. But if any man hate his neighbour, and lie in wait for him, and rise up against him, and smite him mortally that he , and fleeth into one of these cities: Then the of his city shall send and fetch him thence, and him into the hand of the , that he may . Thine eye shall not him, but thou shalt the of innocent from Israel, that it may go well with thee. Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark, which they of old time have set in thine , which thou shalt in the land that thy giveth thee to possess it. One shall not rise up against a man for any , or for any , in any that he sinneth: at the of two , or at the of three , shall the matter be established. If a false rise up against any man to testify against him that which is wrong; Then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before , before the priests and the judges, which shall be in those days; And the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the be a false , and hath testified falsely against his brother; Then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother: so shalt thou put the evil away from among you. And those which shall hear, and fear, and shall henceforth commit no more any such evil among you. And thine eye shall not ; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.
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.