World English Bible · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 8
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You shall observe to do all which I command you today, that you may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which to your fathers. You shall remember all which your has led you these forty years in , that he might humble you, to you, to know what was in , whether you would keep his or not. He humbled you, allowed you to be hungry, and fed you with , which you didn't know, neither did your fathers know, that he might teach you that man does not live by bread only, but man lives by every word that proceeds out of . Your clothing didn't grow old on you, neither did your foot swell, these forty years. You shall consider in that as a man disciplines his son, so your disciplines you. You shall keep of your , to walk in his ways, and to fear him. For your brings you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of springs, and underground water flowing into valleys and hills; a land of wheat, barley, , fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive trees and honey; a land in which you shall eat bread without scarcity, you shall not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you may dig copper. You shall eat and be full, and you shall your for the good land which he has given you. Beware lest you forget your , in not keeping his , his , and his , which I command you today; lest, when you have eaten and are full, and have built fine houses and lived in them; and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; then might be lifted up, and you forget your , who brought you out of the land of , out of the house of bondage; who led you through the great and terrible , with venomous snakes and scorpions, and thirsty ground where there was no water; who poured water for you out of of flint; who fed you in with , which your fathers didn't know, that he might humble you, and that he might prove you, to do you good at your latter end; and lest you say in , "My and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth." But you shall remember your , for it is he who gives you to get wealth, that he may establish his which he to your fathers, as it is today. It shall be, if you shall forget your , and walk after other gods, and them and them, I testify against you today that you shall surely . As the nations that makes to before you, so you shall , because you wouldn't listen to your voice.
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. 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.