World English Bible · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 21
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If someone is found slain in the land which your gives you to possess, lying in the field, and it isn't known who has struck him, then your and your judges shall come out, and they shall measure to the cities which are around him who is slain. It shall be that the which is nearest to the slain man shall take a heifer of the herd, which hasn't been worked with and which has not drawn in the . The of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and shall break the heifer's neck there in the valley. The priests the shall come near, for them your has chosen to minister to him, and to in name; and according to their word shall every controversy and every assault be decided. All the of that city which is nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley. They shall answer and say, "Our hands have not shed this , neither have our eyes seen it. Forgive, , your people Israel, whom you have , and don't allow innocent among your people Israel." shall be forgiven them. So you shall the innocent from among you, when you shall do that which is right in eyes. When you go out to battle against your , and your delivers them into your hands and you carry them away , and see among the a beautiful woman, and you are attracted to her, and to take her as your wife, then you shall bring her home to your house. She shall shave her head and trim her nails. She shall take off the clothing of her , and shall in your house, and bewail her and her mother a full month. After that you shall go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. It shall be, if you have no delight in her, then you shall let her go where she ; but you shall not sell her at all for money. You shall not deal with her as a , because you have humbled her. If a man has two wives, the one beloved and the other hated, and they have borne him children, both the beloved and the hated, and if son is hers who was hated, then it shall be, in the day that he causes his sons to that which he has, that he may not give the son of the beloved the rights of before the son of the hated, who is ; but he shall , the son of the hated, by giving him a double of all that he has; for he is the beginning of his strength. The right of is his. If a man has a and rebellious son who will not the voice of his or the voice of his mother, and though they him, will not listen to them, then his and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the of his city and to the of his place. They shall tell the of his city, "This our son is and rebellious. He will not our voice. He is a glutton and a drunkard." All the men of his city shall stone him to with stones. So you shall remove the evil from among you. All Israel shall hear, and fear. If a man has committed a worthy of , and he is put to , and you hang him , his body shall not all night , but you shall surely bury him the same day; for he who is hanged is of . Don't defile your land which your gives you for an .
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.