King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 4
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
Now therefore , O Israel, unto the and unto , which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which of your fathers giveth you. Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep of your which I command you. Your eyes have seen what did because of : for all the men that followed , thy hath destroyed them from among you. But ye that did cleave unto your are alive every one of you this day. Behold, I have taught you and judgments, even as my commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. Keep therefore and do them; for this is your and your in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these , and say, Surely this great nation is a and people. For what nation is there so great, who hath so nigh unto them, as our is in all things that we call upon him for? And what nation is there so great, that hath and judgments so as all this law, which I set before you this day? Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons; Specially the day that thou stoodest before thy in , when said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children. And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with unto the midst of , with , clouds, and thick . And spake unto you out of the midst of the : ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice. And he declared unto you his , which he commanded you to perform, even ten ; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone. And commanded me at that time to teach you and judgments, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go over to possess it. Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that spake unto you in out of the midst of the : Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven , the similitude of any figure, the of male or female, The of any beast that is on the earth, the of any winged fowl that flieth in the air, 18The of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth: And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto , and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even of , shouldest be driven to them, and them, which thy hath divided unto all nations under the whole . But hath taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, even out of , to be unto him a people of , as ye are this day. Furthermore was angry with me for your sakes, and sware that I should not go over Jordan, and that I should not go in unto that good land, which thy giveth thee for an : But I must in this land, I must not go over Jordan: but ye shall go over, and possess that good land. Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget of your , which he made with you, and make you a graven , or the of any thing, which thy hath forbidden thee. For thy is a , even . When thou shalt beget children, and children’s children, and ye shall have remained long in the land, and shall corrupt yourselves, and make a graven , or the of any thing, and shall do evil in the sight of thy , to provoke him to : I call and earth to against you this day, that ye shall soon utterly from off the land whereunto ye go over Jordan to possess it; ye shall not prolong your days upon it, but shall utterly be destroyed. And shall scatter you among the nations, and ye shall be left few in number among the heathen, whither shall lead you. And there ye shall gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell. But if from thence thou shalt seek thy , thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy and with all thy . When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, even in the , if thou turn to thy , and shalt be obedient unto his voice; (For thy is a merciful ;) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget of thy fathers which he sware unto them. For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that created man upon the earth, and ask from the one side of unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it? Did ever people hear the voice of speaking out of the midst of the , as thou hast heard, and live? Or hath assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terrors, according to all that your did for you in before your eyes? Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that he is ; there is none else beside him. Out of he made thee to hear his voice, that he might instruct thee: and upon earth he shewed thee his great ; and thou heardest his words out of the midst of the . And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their after them, and brought thee out in his sight with his mighty out of ; To drive out nations from before thee greater and mightier than thou art, to bring thee in, to give thee their land for an , as it is this day. Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine , that he is in above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else. Thou shalt keep therefore his , and his , which I command thee this day, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth, which thy giveth thee, for ever. Then severed three cities on this side Jordan toward the sunrising; That the slayer might flee thither, which should kill his neighbour unawares, and hated him not in times past; and that fleeing unto one of these cities he might live: Namely, in , in the plain country, of the ; and in , of the ; and Golan in , of the . And this is which set before the : These are the testimonies, and the , and , which spake unto the , after they came forth out of , On this side Jordan, in the valley over against Beth–peor, in the land of king of the , who dwelt at , whom and the smote, after they were come forth out of : And they his land, and the land of king of , two kings of the , which were on this side Jordan toward the sunrising; From , which is by the bank of the river , even unto mount , which is Hermon, And all the plain on this side Jordan eastward, even unto the sea of the plain, under the springs of .
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.