King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 23
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He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member , shall not enter into of . A bastard shall not enter into of ; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into of . An or shall not enter into of ; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into of for ever: Because they met you not with bread and with water in , when ye came forth out of ; and because they hired against thee the son of of Pethor of , to thee. Nevertheless thy would not unto ; but thy turned the into a unto thee, because thy loved thee. Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever. Thou shalt not abhor an ; for he is thy brother: thou shalt not abhor an ; because thou wast a in his land. The children that are begotten of them shall enter into of in their third generation. When the host goeth forth against thine , then keep thee from every thing. If there be among you any man, that is not clean by reason of uncleanness that chanceth him by night, then shall he go abroad out of the camp, he shall not come within the camp: But it shall be, when evening cometh on, he shall wash himself with water: and when the sun is down, he shall come into the camp again. 12Thou shalt have a place also without the camp, whither thou shalt go forth abroad: And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt and cover that which cometh from thee: For thy walketh in the midst of thy camp, to thee, and to give up thine before thee; therefore shall thy camp be : that he see no thing in thee, and turn away from thee. Thou shalt not unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee: He shall with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of thy , where it liketh him best: thou shalt not oppress him. There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the . Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the thy for any : for even both these are unto thy . Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of any thing that is lent upon usury: Unto a thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that thy may thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it. When thou shalt a unto thy , thou shalt not slack to pay it: for thy will surely require it of thee; and it would be in thee. 22But if thou shalt forbear to , it shall be no in thee. That which is gone out of thy thou shalt keep and perform; even a freewill , according as thou hast unto thy , which thou hast promised with thy . When thou comest into thy neighbour’s , then thou mayest eat grapes thy fill at thine own pleasure; but thou shalt not put any in thy . When thou comest into the standing corn of thy neighbour, then thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand; but thou shalt not move a sickle unto thy neighbour’s standing corn.
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.