King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 24
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When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife. 3And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house; or if the latter husband , which took her to be his wife; Her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is before : and thou shalt not cause the land to , which thy giveth thee for an . When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business: but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken. No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge: for he taketh a man’s life to pledge. If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the , and maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him; then that thief shall ; and thou shalt put evil away from among you. Take heed in the plague of , that thou observe diligently, and do according to all that the priests the shall teach you: as I commanded them, so ye shall observe to do. Remember what thy did unto Miriam by , after that ye were come forth out of . When thou dost lend thy brother any thing, thou shalt not go into his house to fetch his pledge. 11Thou shalt stand abroad, and the man to whom thou dost lend shall bring out the pledge abroad unto thee. And if the man be , thou shalt not sleep with his pledge: In any case thou shalt him the pledge again when the sun goeth down, that he may sleep in his own raiment, and thee: and it shall be unto thee before thy . Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy : At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is , and setteth upon it: lest he cry against thee unto , and it be unto thee. The fathers shall not be put to for the children, neither shall the children be put to for the fathers: every man shall be put to for his own . Thou shalt not pervert the of the , nor of ; nor take a ’s raiment to pledge: But thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in , and thy thee thence: therefore I command thee to do this thing. When thou cuttest down thine harvest in thy field, and hast forgot a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it: it shall be for the , for , and for the : that thy may thee in all the work of thine hands. When thou beatest thine olive tree, thou shalt not go over the boughs again: it shall be for the , for , and for the . When thou gatherest the grapes of thy , thou shalt not it afterward: it shall be for the , for , and for the . And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of : therefore I command thee to do this thing.
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.