King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Exodus 23
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Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with to be an unrighteous . Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest : Neither shalt thou countenance a man in his cause. If thou meet thine enemy’s ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again. If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help with him. Thou shalt not wrest the of thy in his cause. Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and thou not: for I will not . And thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth , and perverteth the words of . Also thou shalt not oppress a : for ye know of a , seeing ye were strangers in the land of . And six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the fruits thereof: But the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that of thy people may eat: and what they leave the of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy , and with thy oliveyard. Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the , may be refreshed. And in all things that I have said unto you be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy . Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year. Thou shalt keep the feast of : (thou shalt eat seven days, as I commanded thee, in the time appointed of the month ; for in it thou camest out from : and none shall appear before me empty:) And the , the of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the , which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field. Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before . Thou shalt not offer of my with leavened bread; neither shall my until the morning. The first of the of thy land thou shalt bring into the thy . Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk. Behold, I send before thee, to keep thee in , and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your : for my name is in him. But if thou shalt indeed his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine , and an adversary unto thine . For mine shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the , and the , and the , and , the , and the : and I will cut them off. Thou shalt not to their gods, nor them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their . And ye shall your , and he shall thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee. There shall nothing cast their young, nor be , in thy land: the number of thy days I will fulfil. I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine turn their backs unto thee. And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the , the , and the , from before thee. I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and of the field multiply against thee. 30By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and the land. And I will set thy bounds from even unto the sea of the , and from unto the river: for I will the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee. Thou shalt make no with them, nor with their gods. They shall not in thy land, lest they make thee against me: for if thou their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee.
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.