King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Exodus 8
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And spake unto , Go unto , and say unto him, Thus saith , Let my people go, that they may me. And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs: And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneadingtroughs: And the frogs shall come up both on thee, and upon thy people, and upon all thy servants. And spake unto , Say unto , Stretch forth thine hand with thy over the streams, over the rivers, and over the ponds, and cause frogs to come up upon the land of . And stretched out his hand over the waters of ; and the frogs came up, and covered the land of . And the magicians did so with their enchantments, and brought up frogs upon the land of . Then called for and , and said, Intreat , that he may take away the frogs from me, and from my people; and I will let the people go, that they may do unto . And said unto , over me: when shall I intreat for thee, and for thy servants, and for thy people, to destroy the frogs from thee and thy houses, that they may in the river only? And he said, To morrow. And he said, Be it according to thy word: that thou mayest know that there is none like unto our . And the frogs shall depart from thee, and from thy houses, and from thy servants, and from thy people; they shall in the river only. And and went out from : and cried unto because of the frogs which he had brought against . And did according to the word of ; and the frogs out of the houses, out of the villages, and out of the fields. And they gathered them together upon heaps: and the land stank. But when saw that there was respite, he hardened , and hearkened not unto them; as had said. And said unto , Say unto , Stretch out thy , and smite of the land, that it may become lice throughout all the land of . And they did so; for stretched out his hand with his , and smote of the earth, and it became lice in man, and in beast; all of the land became lice throughout all the land of . And the magicians did so with their enchantments to bring forth lice, but they could not: so there were lice upon man, and upon beast. Then the magicians said unto , This is the finger of : and ’s was hardened, and he hearkened not unto them; as had said. And said unto , Rise up early in the morning, and stand before ; lo, he cometh forth to the water; and say unto him, Thus saith , Let my people go, that they may me. Else, if thou wilt not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies upon thee, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thy houses: and the houses of the shall be full of swarms of flies, and also the ground whereon they are. And I will sever in that day the land of , in which my people , that no swarms of flies shall be there; to the end thou mayest know that I am in the midst of the earth. 23And I will put a division between my people and thy people: to morrow shall this sign be. And did so; and there came a grievous swarm of flies into the house of , and into his servants’ houses, and into all the land of : the land was corrupted by reason of the swarm of flies. And called for and for , and said, Go ye, to your in the land. And said, It is not meet so to do; for we shall the of the to our : lo, shall we the of the before their eyes, and will they not stone us? We will go three days’ journey into , and to our , as he shall command us. And said, I will let you go, that ye may to your in ; only ye shall not go very far away: intreat for me. And said, Behold, I go out from thee, and I will intreat that the swarms of flies may depart from , from his servants, and from his people, to morrow: but let not deal deceitfully any more in not letting the people go to to . And went out from , and intreated . 31And did according to the word of ; and he removed the swarms of flies from , from his servants, and from his people; there remained not one. And hardened at this time also, neither would he let the people go.
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.