King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 7
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When thy shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the , and the , and the , and , and the , and the , and the , seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when thy shall them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and them; thou shalt make no with them, nor shew mercy unto them: Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may other gods: so will the of be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly. But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their , and break down their , and cut down their groves, and burn their graven with . For thou art an people unto thy : thy hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the of the earth. did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: But because loved you, and because he would keep the which he had unto your fathers, hath brought you out with a mighty hand, and you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of king of . Know therefore that thy , he is , the , which keepeth and mercy with them that love him and keep his to a thousand generations; And repayeth them that hate him to their , to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will him to . Thou shalt therefore keep , and the , and , which I command thee this day, to do them. Wherefore it shall come to pass, if ye to these judgments, and keep, and do them, that thy shall keep unto thee and the mercy which he sware unto thy fathers: And he will love thee, and thee, and multiply thee: he will also the fruit of thy , and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy , and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee. Thou shalt be above all people: there shall not be male or female among you, or among your cattle. And will take away from thee all sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of , which thou knowest, upon thee; but will lay them upon all them that hate thee. And thou shalt consume all the people which thy shall thee; thine eye shall have no upon them: neither shalt thou their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee. If thou shalt say in thine , These nations are more than I; how can I dispossess them? Thou shalt not be afraid of them: but shalt well remember what thy did unto , and unto all ; The great temptations which thine eyes saw, and the signs, and the wonders, and the mighty hand, and the stretched out arm, whereby thy brought thee out: so shall thy do unto all the people of whom thou art afraid. Moreover thy will send the hornet among them, until they that are left, and hide themselves from thee, be destroyed. Thou shalt not be affrighted at them: for thy is among you, a mighty and terrible. And thy will put out those nations before thee by little and little: thou mayest not consume them at once, lest the of the field increase upon thee. But thy shall them unto thee, and shall destroy them with a mighty , until they be destroyed. And he shall their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt destroy their name from under : there shall no man be able to stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them. The graven of their gods shall ye burn with : thou shalt not the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it unto thee, lest thou be snared therein: for it is an to thy . Neither shalt thou bring an into thine house, lest thou be a thing like it: but thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a thing.
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.