King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 6
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Now these are , the , and , which your commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it: That thou mightest thy , to keep all his and his , which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with . Hear, O Israel: our is one : And thou shalt love thy with all thine , and with all thy , and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine : And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by , and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy . And it shall be, when thy shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to , to , and to , to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, And houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full; 12Then beware lest thou forget , which brought thee forth out of the land of , from the house of bondage. Thou shalt thy , and him, and shalt by his name. Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you; (For thy is among you) lest the of thy be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the of the earth. Ye shall not your , as ye him in . Ye shall diligently keep of your , and his testimonies, and his , which he hath commanded thee. And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of : that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land which sware unto thy fathers, To cast out all thine from before thee, as hath spoken. And when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies, and the , and , which our hath commanded you? Then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were ’s bondmen in ; and brought us out of with a mighty hand: And shewed signs and wonders, great and sore, upon , upon , and upon all his household, before our eyes: And he brought us out from thence, that he might bring us in, to give us the land which he sware unto our fathers. And commanded us to do all these , to our , for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as it is at this day. And it shall be our , if we observe to do all these before our , as he hath commanded us.
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.
Christians read this chapter differently
- How does the Trinity work? · Deuteronomy 6:4
Every view at its strongest, with who holds it and what it has to answer for.
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.