King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 26
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
And it shall be, when thou art come in unto the land which thy giveth thee for an , and possessest it, and dwellest therein; That thou shalt take of the first of all the fruit of the earth, which thou shalt bring of thy land that thy giveth thee, and shalt put it in a basket, and shalt go unto the place which thy shall choose to place his name there. And thou shalt go unto the priest that shall be in those days, and say unto him, I profess this day unto thy , that I am come unto the country which sware unto our fathers for to give us. And the priest shall take the basket out of thine hand, and set it down before the of thy . And thou shalt speak and say before thy , A ready to was , and he went down into , and sojourned there with , and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous: And the evil entreated us, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage: And when we cried unto of our fathers, heard our voice, and looked on our affliction, and our labour, and our : And brought us forth out of with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs, and with wonders: And he hath brought us into this place, and hath given us this land, even a land that floweth with . And now, behold, I have brought the of the land, which thou, O , hast given me. And thou shalt set it before thy , and before thy : And thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which thy hath given unto thee, and unto thine house, thou, and the , and the that is among you. When thou hast made an end of tithing all the of thine increase the third year, which is the year of tithing, and hast given it unto the , the , , and the , that they may eat within thy , and be filled; Then thou shalt say before thy , I have brought away the hallowed things out of mine house, and also have given them unto the , and unto the , to , and to the , according to all thy which thou hast commanded me: I have not transgressed thy , neither have I forgotten them: I have not eaten thereof in my , neither have I taken away ought thereof for any use, nor given ought thereof for : but I have hearkened to my , and have done according to all that thou hast commanded me. Look down from thy habitation, from , and thy people Israel, and the land which thou hast given us, as thou swarest unto our fathers, a land that floweth with . This day thy hath commanded thee to do these and judgments: thou shalt therefore keep and do them with all thine , and with all thy . Thou hast avouched this day to be thy , and to walk in his ways, and to keep his , and his , and his judgments, and to unto his voice: And hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people, as he hath promised thee, and that thou shouldest keep all his ; And to make thee high above all nations which he hath made, in , and in name, and in ; and that thou mayest be an people unto thy , as he hath spoken.
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.