King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Leviticus 19
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1And spake unto , saying, Speak unto all of the , and say unto them, Ye shall be : for I your am . Ye shall fear every man his mother, and his , and keep my : I am your . Turn ye not unto idols, nor make to yourselves molten gods: I am your . And if ye offer a of unto , ye shall offer it at your own will. It shall be eaten the same day ye offer it, and on the morrow: and if ought until the third day, it shall be burnt in the . And if it be eaten at all on the third day, it is ; it shall not be accepted. Therefore every one that eateth it shall bear his , because he hath profaned the hallowed thing of : and that from among his people. And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the of thy harvest. And thou shalt not thy , neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy ; thou shalt leave them for and : I am your . Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another. And ye shall not by my name falsely, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy : I am . Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not with thee all night until the morning. Thou shalt not the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy : I am . Ye shall do no unrighteousness in : thou shalt not respect the person of , nor the person of the mighty: but in shalt thou judge thy neighbour. Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people: neither shalt thou stand against of thy neighbour: I am . Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine : thou shalt in any rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer upon him. Thou shalt not , nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am . Ye shall keep . Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled : neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee. And whosoever lieth carnally with a woman, that is a bondmaid, to an husband, and not at all , nor given her; she shall be scourged; they shall not be put to , because she was not free. And he shall bring his unto , unto the door of the of , even a ram for a . And the priest shall make an atonement for him with the ram of the before for his which he hath done: and the which he hath done shall be forgiven him. And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as : three years shall it be as unto you: it shall not be eaten of. But in the fourth year all the fruit thereof shall be to withal. And in the fifth year shall ye eat of the fruit thereof, that it may yield unto you the increase thereof: I am your . Ye shall not eat any thing with : neither shall ye use enchantment, nor observe times. Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard. Ye shall not make any cuttings in your for , nor print any marks upon you: I am . Do not thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness. Ye shall keep my , and reverence my sanctuary: I am . Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am your . Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and the of the old man, and fear thy : I am . And if a sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of : I am your . Ye shall do no unrighteousness in , in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. balances, weights, a ephah, and a hin, shall ye have: I am your , which brought you out of the land of . Therefore shall ye observe all , and all my judgments, and do them: I am .
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.