King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Exodus 2
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
And there went a man of the , and took to wife a daughter of . And the woman conceived, and a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him. And the daughter of came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she had on him, and said, This is one of the ’ children. Then said his sister to ’s daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the women, that she may nurse the child for thee? And ’s daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child’s mother. 9And ’s daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it. And the child grew, and she brought him unto ’s daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name : and she said, Because I drew him out of the water. And it came to pass in those days, when was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an smiting an , one of his brethren. And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the , and hid him in the sand. And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the ? And feared, and said, Surely this thing is known. Now when heard this thing, he sought to . But fled from the of , and dwelt in the land of : and he sat down by a well. Now the priest of had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their ’s flock. And the came and drove them away: but stood up and helped them, and watered their flock. And when they came to their , he said, How is it that ye are come so soon to day? And they said, An us out of the hand of the , and also drew water enough for us, and watered the flock. And he said unto his daughters, And where is he? why is it that ye have left the man? call him, that he may eat bread. And was content to with the man: and he gave Zipporah his daughter. And she him a son, and he called his name : for he said, I have been a in a strange land. And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of : and the sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto by reason of the bondage. And heard their groaning, and remembered his with , with , and with . And looked upon the , and had respect 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.