World English Bible · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 29
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These are the words of which commanded to make with the in the land of , in addition to which he made with them in . called to all Israel, and said to them: Your eyes have seen all that did in the land of to , and to all his servants, and to all his land; the great which your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders. But has not given you a to know, eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day. I have led you forty years in . Your clothes have not grown old on you, and your have not grown old on your feet. You have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk or , that you may know that I am your . When you came to this place, the king of and the king of came out against us to battle, and we struck them. We took their land, and gave it for an to the , and to the , and to the half-tribe of the . Therefore keep the words of this and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do. All of you stand today in the of your : your heads, your tribes, your , and your officers, even all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and the who are in the middle of your camps, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water, that you may enter into of your , and into his , which your makes with you today, that he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your , as he spoke to you and as he to your fathers, to , to , and to . Neither do I make this and this with you only, but with those who stand here with us today before our , and also with those who are not here with us today (for you know how we lived in the land of , and how we came through the middle of the nations through which you passed; and you have seen their and their idols of wood, stone, silver, and gold, which were among them); lest there should be among you man, woman, family, or tribe whose turns away today from our , to go to the gods of those nations; lest there should be among you a root that produces bitter poison; and it happen, when he hears the words of this , that he himself in , saying, "I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of ," to destroy the moist with the dry. will not pardon him, but then and his will smoke against that man, and all the that is written in this book will fall on him, and will blot out his name from under . will set him apart for evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the of written in this book of . The generation to come—your children who will rise up after you, and the who will come from a far land—will say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses with which has made it sick, that all of its land is sulfur, salt, and burning, that it is not sown, doesn't produce, nor does any grass grow in it, like the overthrow of , , Admah, and Zeboiim, which overthrew in his , and in his . Even all the nations will say, "Why has done this to this land? What does the heat of this great mean?" Then men will say, "Because they abandoned of , the of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of , and went and other gods and them, gods that they didn't know and that he had not given to them. Therefore burned against this land, to bring on it all the that are written in this book. rooted them out of their land in , in , and in great , and thrust them into another land, as it is today." The belong to our ; but the things that are belong to us and to our children , that we may do all the words of this law.
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.