King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Leviticus 18
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
1And spake unto , saying, Speak unto the , and say unto them, I am your . After the doings of the land of , wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of , whither I bring you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk in their . Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine , to walk therein: I am your . Ye shall therefore keep , and my judgments: which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am . None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their : I am . The thy , or the thy mother, shalt thou not uncover: she is thy mother; thou shalt not . The thy ’s wife shalt thou not uncover: it is thy ’s . The thy sister, the daughter of thy , or daughter of thy mother, whether she be born at home, or born abroad, even their thou shalt not uncover. 10The thy son’s daughter, or of thy daughter’s daughter, even their thou shalt not uncover: for theirs is thine own . 11The thy ’s wife’s daughter, begotten of thy , she is thy sister, thou shalt not . Thou shalt not of thy ’s sister: she is thy ’s near kinswoman. 13Thou shalt not of thy mother’s sister: for she is thy mother’s near kinswoman. Thou shalt not of thy ’s brother, thou shalt not approach to his wife: she is thine aunt. Thou shalt not of thy daughter in law: she is thy son’s wife; thou shalt not . Thou shalt not of thy brother’s wife: it is thy brother’s . Thou shalt not of a woman and her daughter, neither shalt thou take her son’s daughter, or her daughter’s daughter, to ; for they are her near kinswomen: it is wickedness. Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to , beside the other in her life time. Also thou shalt not approach unto a woman to , as long as she is put apart for her uncleanness. Moreover thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbour’s wife, to defile thyself with her. And thou shalt not let any of thy pass through the to , neither shalt thou profane the name of thy : I am . Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is . Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion. Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. Ye shall therefore keep and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these ; neither any of your own nation, nor any that sojourneth among you: (For all these have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled;) That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you. For whosoever shall commit any of these , even the that commit them from among their people. Therefore shall ye keep mine , that ye commit not any one of these customs, which were committed before you, and that ye defile not yourselves therein: I am your .
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.