King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Leviticus 21
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And said unto , Speak unto the priests the sons of , and say unto them, There shall none be defiled for among his people: But for his kin, that is near unto him, that is, for his mother, and for his , and for his son, and for his daughter, and for his brother, 3And for his sister a virgin, that is nigh unto him, which hath had no husband; for her may he be defiled. But he shall not defile himself, being a chief man among his people, to profane himself. They shall not make baldness upon their head, neither shall they shave off the corner of their beard, nor make any cuttings in their . They shall be unto their , and not profane the name of their : for the of made by , and the bread of their , they do offer: therefore they shall be . They shall not take a wife that is a whore, or profane; neither shall they take a woman from her husband: for he is unto his . Thou shalt him therefore; for he offereth the bread of thy : he shall be unto thee: for I , which you, am . And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her : she shall be burnt with . And he that is the among his brethren, upon whose head the anointing oil was poured, and that is to put on the garments, shall not uncover his head, nor rend his clothes; Neither shall he go in to any body, nor defile himself for his , or for his mother; Neither shall he go out of , nor profane of his ; for the of the anointing oil of his is upon him: I am . And he shall take a wife in her virginity. A , or a woman, or profane, or an , these shall he not take: but he shall take a virgin of his own people to wife. Neither shall he profane among his people: for I do him. 16And spake unto , saying, Speak unto , saying, Whosoever he be of thy in their generations that hath any , let him not approach to offer the bread of his . For whatsoever man he be that hath a , he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, 19Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken; No man that hath a of the of the priest shall come nigh to offer the of made by : he hath a ; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his . He shall eat the bread of his , both of the most , and of the . Only he shall not go in unto the vail, nor come nigh unto the , because he hath a ; that he profane not my sanctuaries: for I do them. And told it unto , and to his sons, and unto all the .
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.