King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Deuteronomy 9
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Hear, O Israel: Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and fenced up to , A people great and tall, the children of the Anakims, whom thou knowest, and of whom thou hast heard say, Who can stand before the children of ! Understand therefore this day, that thy is he which goeth over before thee; as a he shall destroy them, and he shall bring them down before thy : so shalt thou drive them out, and destroy them quickly, as hath said unto thee. Speak not thou in thine , after that thy hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my hath brought me in to possess this land: but for the wickedness of these nations doth drive them out from before thee. Not for thy , or for the uprightness of thine , dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations thy doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may perform the word which sware unto thy fathers, , , and . Understand therefore, that thy giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy ; for thou art a people. Remember, and forget not, how thou provokedst thy to in : from the day that thou didst depart out of the land of , until ye came unto this place, ye have been rebellious against . Also in ye provoked to , so that was angry with you to have destroyed you. When I was gone up into the mount to receive the tables of stone, even the tables of which made with you, then I abode in the mount forty days and forty nights, I neither did eat bread nor drink water: And unto me two tables of stone written with the finger of ; and on them was written according to all the words, which spake with you in the mount out of the midst of the in the day of . And it came to pass at the end of forty days and forty nights, that gave me the two tables of stone, even the tables of . And said unto me, Arise, get thee down quickly from hence; for thy people which thou hast brought forth out of have corrupted themselves; they are quickly turned aside out of which I commanded them; they have made them a molten . Furthermore spake unto me, saying, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a people: Let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under : and I will make of thee a nation mightier and greater than they. So I turned and came down from the mount, and the mount burned with : and the two tables of were in my two hands. And I looked, and, behold, ye had against your , and had made you a molten calf: ye had turned aside quickly out of which had commanded you. 17And I took the two tables, and cast them out of my two hands, and brake them before your eyes. And I fell down before , as at the first, forty days and forty nights: I did neither eat bread, nor drink water, because of all your which ye , in doing wickedly in the sight of , to provoke him to . For I was afraid of the and hot displeasure, wherewith was wroth against you to destroy you. But hearkened unto me at that time also. And was very angry with to have destroyed him: and I for also the same time. And I took your , the calf which ye had made, and burnt it with , and stamped it, and ground it very small, even until it was as small as : and I cast thereof into the brook that descended out of the mount. And at , and at , and at , ye provoked to . Likewise when sent you from , saying, Go up and possess the land which I have given you; then ye rebelled against the of your , and ye him not, nor hearkened to his voice. Ye have been rebellious against from the day that I knew you. Thus I fell down before forty days and forty nights, as I fell down at the first; because had said he would destroy you. I therefore unto , and said, O , destroy not thy people and thine , which thou hast through thy greatness, which thou hast brought forth out of with a mighty hand. Remember thy servants, , , and ; look not unto the stubbornness of this people, nor to their wickedness, nor to their : Lest the land whence thou broughtest us out say, Because was not able to bring them into the land which he promised them, and because he hated them, he hath brought them out to them in . Yet they are thy people and thine , which thou broughtest out by thy mighty and by thy stretched out arm.
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.