King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 21
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If one be found slain in the land which thy giveth thee to possess it, lying in the field, and it be not known who hath slain him: Then thy and thy judges shall come forth, and they shall measure unto the cities which are round about him that is slain: And it shall be, that the city which is next unto the slain man, even the of that city shall take an heifer, which hath not been wrought with, and which hath not drawn in the ; And the of that city shall bring down the heifer unto a rough valley, which is neither eared nor sown, and shall strike off the heifer’s neck there in the valley: And the priests the shall come near; for them thy hath chosen to minister unto him, and to in the name of ; and by their word shall every controversy and every stroke be tried: And all the of that city, that are next unto the slain man, shall wash their hands over the heifer that is beheaded in the valley: And they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this , neither have our eyes seen it. Be merciful, O , unto thy people Israel, whom thou hast , and lay not innocent unto thy people of Israel’s charge. And shall be forgiven them. So shalt thou the of innocent from among you, when thou shalt do that which is right in the sight of . When thou goest forth to war against thine , and thy hath them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them , And seest among the a beautiful woman, and hast a unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife; Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails; And she shall put the raiment of her from off her, and shall in thine house, and bewail her and her mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife. And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go whither she will; but thou shalt not sell her at all for money, thou shalt not make merchandise of her, because thou hast humbled her. If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have born him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if son be hers that was hated: Then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved before the son of the hated, which is indeed : But he shall the son of the hated for , by giving him a double of all that he hath: for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of is his. If a man have a and rebellious son, which will not the voice of his , or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not unto them: Then shall his and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the of his city, and unto the of his place; And they shall say unto the of his city, This our son is and rebellious, he will not our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he : so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. And if a man have committed a worthy of , and he be to be put to , and thou hang him : His body shall not all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is of ;) that thy land be not defiled, which thy giveth thee for an .
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.