King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 22
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Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ox or his sheep go astray, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt in any case bring them again unto thy brother. And if thy brother be not nigh unto thee, or if thou know him not, then thou shalt bring it unto thine own house, and it shall be with thee until thy brother seek after it, and thou shalt restore it to him again. 3In like manner shalt thou do with his ass; and so shalt thou do with his raiment; and with all lost thing of thy brother’s, which he hath lost, and thou hast found, shalt thou do likewise: thou mayest not hide thyself. Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ass or his ox fall down by , and hide thyself from them: thou shalt surely help him to lift them up again. The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are unto thy . If a bird’s nest chance to be before thee in in any tree, or on the ground, whether they be young ones, or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young: But thou shalt in any let the dam go, and take the young to thee; that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days. When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not upon thine house, if any man fall from thence. Thou shalt not sow thy with divers seeds: lest the fruit of thy which thou hast sown, and the fruit of thy , be defiled. Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together. Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woollen and linen together. Thou shalt make thee upon the four quarters of thy vesture, wherewith thou coverest thyself. If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: 15Then shall of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel’s virginity unto the in the : 16And the damsel’s shall say unto the , I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her; 17And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the . And the of that city shall take that man and him; And they shall amerce him in an hundred of silver, and give them unto of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days. 20But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her ’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she : because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her ’s house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you. If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them , both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou evil from Israel. If a damsel that is a virgin be unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out unto the of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they ; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour’s wife: so thou shalt evil from among you. But if a man find a damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall : But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no worthy of : for as when a man riseth against his neighbour, and slayeth him, even so is this matter: For he found her in the field, and the damsel cried, and there was none to her. If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not , and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s fifty of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days. A man shall not take his ’s wife, nor discover his ’s .
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.