King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Exodus 31
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1And spake unto , saying, See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of , the son of , of the tribe of Judah: And I have filled him with of , in , and in , and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, And in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship. And I, behold, I have given with him Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan: and in the of all that are hearted I have put , that they may make all that I have commanded thee; The of , and the , and the that is thereupon, and all the furniture of the , And the table and his furniture, and the pure candlestick with all his furniture, and the , And the of burnt offering with all his furniture, and the laver and his foot, And the cloths of , and the garments for the priest, and the garments of his sons, to minister in the priest’s office, And the anointing oil, and for the place: according to all that I have commanded thee shall they do. 12And spake unto , saying, Speak thou also unto the , saying, Verily my ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am that doth you. Ye shall keep the therefore; for it is unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to : for whosoever doeth any work therein, that from among his people. Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the of rest, to : whosoever doeth any work in the , he shall surely be put to . Wherefore the shall keep the , to observe the throughout their generations, for a perpetual . It is a sign between me and the for ever: for in six days made and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed. And he gave unto , when he had made an end of communing with him upon , two tables of , tables of stone, written with the finger of .
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.