King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Exodus 21
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Now these are which thou shalt set before them. If thou buy an servant, six years he shall : and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. 4If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall him for ever. And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do. If she please not her master, who hath her to himself, then shall he let her be : to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no , seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her. 9And if he have her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters. If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish. 11And if he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out free without money. He that smiteth a man, so that he , shall be surely put to . And if a man lie not in wait, but him into his hand; then I will appoint thee a place whither he shall flee. But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbour, to him with guile; thou shalt take him from mine , that he may . And he that smiteth his , or his mother, shall be surely put to . And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to . And he that curseth his , or his mother, shall surely be put to . And if men strive together, and one smite another with a stone, or with his fist, and he not, but keepeth his bed: If he , and walk abroad upon his , then shall he that smote him be quit: only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall cause him to be thoroughly healed. And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a , and he under his hand; he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money. If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it ; he shall let him go free for his eye’s sake. 27And if he smite out his manservant’s tooth, or his maidservant’s tooth; he shall let him go free for his tooth’s sake. If an ox gore a man or a woman, that they : then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be quit. But if the ox were wont to push with his in time past, and it hath been testified to his owner, and he hath not kept him in, but that he hath killed a man or a woman; the ox shall be stoned, and his owner also shall be put to . If there be laid on him a sum of money, then he shall give for the of his life whatsoever is laid upon him. 31Whether he have gored a son, or have gored a daughter, according to this shall it be done unto him. If the ox shall push a manservant or a maidservant; he shall give unto their master thirty of silver, and the ox shall be stoned. And if a man shall open a pit, or if a man shall dig a pit, and not cover it, and an ox or an ass fall therein; The owner of shall make it good, and give money unto the owner of them; and beast shall be his. 35And if one man’s ox hurt another’s, that he ; then they shall sell the live ox, and divide the money of it; and ox also they shall divide. 36Or if it be known that the ox hath used to push in time past, and his owner hath not kept him in; he shall surely pay ox for ox; and shall be his own.
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.