King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Exodus 19
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In the third month, when the were gone forth out of the land of , the same day came they into of Sinai. For they were departed from , and were come to of Sinai, and had pitched in ; and there Israel camped before the mount. And went up unto , and called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of , and tell the ; Ye have seen what I did unto the , and how I you on eagles’ , and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will indeed, and keep my , then ye shall be a peculiar unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the . And came and called for the of the people, and laid before their faces all these words which commanded him. And all the people answered together, and said, All that hath spoken we will do. And returned the words of the people unto . And said unto , Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and thee for ever. And told the words of the people unto . And said unto , Go unto the people, and them to day and to morrow, and let them wash their clothes, And be ready against the third day: for the third day will come down in the sight of all the people upon . And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to : There shall not an hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not live: when the soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount. And went down from the mount unto the people, and the people; and they washed their clothes. And he said unto the people, Be ready against the third day: come not at your wives. And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled. And brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with ; and they stood at the nether part of the mount. And was altogether on a smoke, because descended upon it in : and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, spake, and answered him by a voice. And came down upon , on the top of the mount: and called up to the top of the mount; and went up. And said unto , Go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto to gaze, and many of them . And let the priests also, which come near to , themselves, lest break forth upon them. And said unto , The people cannot come up to : for thou chargedst us, saying, Set bounds about the mount, and it. And said unto him, Away, get thee down, and thou shalt come up, thou, and with thee: but let not the priests and the people break through to come up unto , lest he break forth upon them. 25So went down unto the people, and spake unto them.
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.