King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 8
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All which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which sware unto your fathers. And thou shalt remember all which thy led thee these forty years in , to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine , whether thou wouldest keep his , or no. And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to , and fed thee with , which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of doth man live. Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years. Thou shalt also consider in thine , that, as a man chasteneth his son, so thy chasteneth thee. Therefore thou shalt keep of thy , to walk in his ways, and to fear him. For thy bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; A land of wheat, and barley, and , and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt thy for the good land which he hath given thee. Beware that thou forget not thy , in not keeping his , and his judgments, and his , which I command thee this day: Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; And when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; Then thine be lifted up, and thou forget thy , which brought thee forth out of the land of , from the house of bondage; Who led thee through that great and terrible , wherein were , and scorpions, and , where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of of flint; Who fed thee in with , which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end; And thou say in thine , My and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember thy : for it is he that giveth thee to get wealth, that he may establish his which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day. And it shall be, if thou do at all forget thy , and walk after other gods, and them, and them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely . As the nations which destroyeth before your , so shall ye ; because ye would not be obedient unto your .
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
- Does God promise us good things in this life? · Deuteronomy 8:11-18
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.