King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Exodus 34
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And said unto , Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest. And be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning unto , and present thyself there to me in the top of the mount. And no man shall come up with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount; neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount. 4And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and rose up early in the morning, and went up unto , as had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone. And descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of . And passed by before him, and proclaimed, , , merciful and , , and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving and and , and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. And made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and . And he said, If now I have found in thy sight, O , let my , I thee, go among us; for it is a people; and pardon our and our , and take us for thine . And he said, Behold, I make a : before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of : for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee. Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the , and the , and the , and the , and the , and the . Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: But ye shall destroy their , break their , and cut down their groves: For thou shalt no other : for , whose name is , is : Lest thou make a with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a after their gods, and do unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his ; And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a after their gods, and make thy sons go a after their gods. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods. The feast of shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat , as I commanded thee, in the time of the month : for in the month thou camest out from . All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male. But the firstling of an ass thou shalt with : and if thou him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All of thy sons thou shalt . And none shall appear before me empty. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest. And thou shalt observe the , of the of wheat harvest, and the at the year’s end. Thrice in the year shall all your men children appear before , the of Israel. For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before thy thrice in the year. Thou shalt not offer of my with ; neither shall the of the feast of be left unto the morning. The first of the of thy land thou shalt bring unto the thy . Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk. And said unto , Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a with thee and with Israel. And he was there with forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of , . And it came to pass, when came down from with the two tables of in ’ hand, when he came down from the mount, that wist not that the skin of shone while he talked with him. And when and all the saw , behold, the skin of shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him. And called unto them; and and all the of returned unto him: and talked with them. And afterward all the came nigh: and he gave them in all that had spoken with him in . And till had done speaking with them, he put a vail on . But when went in before to speak with him, he took the vail off, until he came out. And he came out, and spake unto the that which he was commanded. And the saw the of , that the skin of ’ shone: and put the vail upon again, until he went in to speak with him.
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.