World English Bible · Egypt and Sinai
Leviticus 12
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1 spoke to , saying, "Speak to the , saying, 'If a woman conceives, and bears a male child, then she shall be seven days; as in the days of her monthly period she shall be . In the eighth day of his foreskin shall be . She shall continue in of purification thirty-three days. She shall not touch any thing, nor come into , until the days of her purifying are completed. But if she bears a female child, then she shall be two weeks, as in her period; and she shall continue in of purification sixty-six days. "'When the days of her purification are completed for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring to the priest at the door of the , a year old lamb for a , and a young pigeon or a turtledove, for a . He shall offer it before , and make atonement for her; then she shall be cleansed from the fountain of her . "'This is for her who bears, whether a male or a female. If she cannot afford , then she shall take two or two : the one for a , and the other for a . The priest shall make atonement for her, and she shall be clean.'"
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. 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.