King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 32
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Give ear, O ye , and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my . My doctrine shall drop as the , my speech shall distil as the , as the small upon the tender herb, and as the upon the grass: Because I will publish the name of : ascribe ye greatness unto our . He is , his work is perfect: for all his ways are : a of truth and without , and right is he. They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his children: they are a perverse and crooked generation. Do ye thus requite , O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee? Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy , and he will shew thee; thy , and they will tell thee. When divided to the nations their , when he separated the sons of , he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the . For ’s is his people; is the lot of his . He found him in a land, and in the waste howling ; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her , taketh them, beareth them on her : So alone did lead him, and there was no strange with him. He made him ride on the of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of , and oil out of the flinty ; Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of , and goats, with kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure of the grape. But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook which made him, and lightly esteemed of his . They provoked him to with strange gods, with provoked they him to . They unto devils, not to ; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not. Of that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten that formed thee. And when saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provoking of his sons, and of his daughters. And he said, I will hide from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no . They have moved me to with that which is not ; they have provoked me to with their : and I will move them to with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to with a foolish nation. For a is kindled in mine , and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on the foundations of the mountains. I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them. They shall be burnt with , and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter : I will also send the teeth of upon them, with the poison of of . without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs. I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men: Were it not that I feared the of , lest their should behave themselves strangely, and lest they should say, Our hand is high, and hath not done all this. For they are a nation void of , neither is there any in them. O that they were , that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end! How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their had sold them, and had shut them up? For their is not as our , even our themselves being judges. For their is of of , and of the fields of : their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter: Their is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps. Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my ? To me belongeth , and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste. For shall judge his people, and himself for his servants, when he seeth that their is gone, and there is none shut up, or left. And he shall say, Where are their gods, their in whom they trusted, Which did eat their , and drank the of their drink ? let them rise up and help you, and be your protection. See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can out of my hand. For I lift up my hand to , and say, I live for ever. If I whet my glittering , and mine hand take hold on ; I will render to mine , and will reward them that hate me. I will make mine arrows drunk with , and my shall devour ; and that with of the slain and of the , of revenges upon . Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people: for he will of his servants, and will render to his , and will be merciful unto his land, and to his people. And came and spake all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he, and the son of . 45And made an end of speaking all these words to all Israel: And he said unto them, Set your unto all the words which I testify among you this day, which ye shall command your children to observe to do, all the words of this law. For it is not a thing for you; because it is your life: and through this thing ye shall prolong your days in the land, whither ye go over Jordan to possess it. And spake unto that selfsame day, saying, Get thee up into this mountain , unto , which is in the land of , that is over against ; and behold the land of , which I give unto the for a possession: And in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people; as thy brother in , and was gathered unto his people: Because ye trespassed against me among the at the waters of –, in of ; because ye me not in the midst of the . Yet thou shalt see the land before thee; but thou shalt not go thither unto the land which I give the .
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.