World English Bible · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 20
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When you go out to battle against your , and see horses, chariots, and a people more numerous than you, you shall not be afraid of them; for your , who brought you up out of the land of , is with you. It shall be, when you draw near to the battle, that the priest shall approach and speak to the people, and shall tell them, "Hear, Israel, you draw near today to battle against your . Don't let faint! Don't be afraid, nor tremble, neither be scared of them; for your is he who goes with you, to fight for you against your , to you." The officers shall speak to the people, saying, "What man is there who has built a new house, and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he in the battle, and another man dedicate it. What man is there who has planted a , and has not used its fruit? Let him go and return to his house, lest he in the battle, and another man use its fruit. What man is there who has pledged to be married to a wife, and has not taken her? Let him go and return to his house, lest he in the battle, and another man take her." The officers shall speak further to the people, and they shall say, "What man is there who is fearful and faint-hearted? Let him go and return to his house, lest his brother's melt as ." 9It shall be, when the officers have finished speaking to the people, that they shall appoint captains of armies at the head of the people. When you draw near to a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace to it. It shall be, if it gives you answer of peace and opens to you, then it shall be that all the people who are found therein shall become forced laborers to you, and shall you. 12If it will make no peace with you, but will make war against you, then you shall besiege it. When your delivers it into your hand, you shall strike every male of it with the edge of ; but the women, the little ones, the livestock, and all that is in the city, even all its plunder, you shall take for plunder for yourself. You may use the plunder of your , which your has given you. 15Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far off from you, which are not of the cities of these nations. But of the cities of these peoples that your gives you for an , you shall alive nothing that breathes; but you shall them: the , the , the , the , the , and the , as your has commanded you; that they not teach you to follow all their , which they have done for their gods; so would you against your . When you shall besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them; for you may eat of them. You shall not cut them down, for is the tree of the field man, that it should be besieged by you? Only the trees that you know are not trees for food, you shall destroy and cut them down. You shall build bulwarks against the city that makes war with you, until it falls.
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.