King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Exodus 11
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
And said unto , Yet will I bring one plague more upon , and upon ; afterwards he will let you go hence: when he shall let you go, he shall surely thrust you out hence altogether. Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man borrow of his neighbour, and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold. And gave the people in the sight of the . Moreover the man was very great in the land of , in the sight of ’s servants, and in the sight of the people. And said, Thus saith , About midnight will I go out into the midst of : And all in the land of shall , from of that sitteth upon his , even unto of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all of . And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of , such as there was none like it, nor shall be like it any more. But against any of the shall not a dog move his , against man or beast: that ye may know how that doth put a difference between the and Israel. And all these thy servants shall come down unto me, and themselves unto me, saying, Get thee out, and all the people that follow thee: and after that I will go out. And he went out from in a great . And said unto , shall not unto you; that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of . And and did all these wonders before : and hardened ’s , so that he would not let the go out of his land.
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.