King James Version · Entering the land
Joshua 5
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And it came to pass, when all the kings of the , which were on the side of Jordan westward, and all the kings of , which were by the sea, heard that had dried up the waters of Jordan from before the , until we were passed over, that their melted, neither was there in them any more, because of the . At that time said unto , Make thee sharp knives, and circumcise again the the second time. And made him sharp knives, and the at the hill of the foreskins. And this is the cause why did circumcise: All the people that came out of , that were males, even all the men of war, in by , after they came out of . Now all the people that came out were : but all the people that were born in by as they came forth out of , them they had not . For the walked forty years in , till all the people that were men of war, which came out of , were consumed, because they not : unto whom sware that he would not shew them the land, which sware unto their fathers that he would give us, a land that floweth with . And their children, whom he up in their stead, them : for they were , because they had not them by . And it came to pass, when they had done circumcising all the people, that they abode in their places in the camp, till they were whole. And said unto , This day have I rolled away the of from off you. Wherefore the name of the place is called unto this day. And the encamped in , and kept on the fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of . And they did eat of the old corn of the land on the morrow after , cakes, and parched corn in the selfsame day. And ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land; neither had the any more; but they did eat of the fruit of the land of that year. And it came to pass, when was by , that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his drawn in his hand: and went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our ? And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of am I now come. And fell on to the earth, and did , and said unto him, What saith my unto his servant? And the captain of ’s host said unto , Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is . And did so.
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 · Entering the land, 1250 BC to 1200 BC ›
Israel crossing into Canaan and contending with fortified city-states, each with its own king, in a land Egypt had recently dominated and was now losing its grip on.
- The collapse
- The whole eastern Mediterranean is coming apart. Within about fifty years the Hittite empire falls, its capital burns, the Mycenaean palaces are destroyed, Ugarit is wiped out mid-correspondence, and Egypt is fighting for its life against seaborne invaders. Nobody fully knows why. Drought, earthquake, migration, and the failure of interlocking trade are all in the explanation.
- Egypt
- Still strong enough to record a victory over a people called Israel on a stone monument around 1207 BC, the earliest mention of the name outside the Bible. But Egyptian control of Canaan is slipping, and within a generation it is gone.
- Canaan
- Not a country but dozens of walled towns, each with its own king, its own god, and its own quarrel with the next valley. This is why the book of Joshua reads as a list of kings rather than a war with a nation.
- Further afield
- Iron is beginning to replace bronze across the region, partly because the tin trade that made bronze possible has broken down. The Olmec are building San Lorenzo. The Zhou are about to overthrow the Shang in China.