World English Bible · Egypt and Sinai
Leviticus 26
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"'You shall make for yourselves no idols, and you shall not raise up a or a pillar, and you shall not place any figured stone in your land, to to it; for I am your . "'You shall keep my , and have reverence for my sanctuary. I am . "'If you walk in and keep my , and do them, then I will give you your in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Your shall continue until the vintage, and the vintage shall continue until the sowing time. You shall eat your bread to the full, and in your land safely. "'I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one will make you afraid. I will remove evil animals out of the land, neither shall go through your land. 7You shall chase your , and they shall fall before you . Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand; and your shall fall before you . "'I will have respect for you, make you fruitful, multiply you, and will establish my with you. You shall eat old supplies long kept, and you shall move out the old because of the new. I will set my tent among you, and won't abhor you. I will walk among you, and will be your , and you will be my people. I am your , who brought you out of the land of , that you should not be their . I have broken the bars of your , and made you walk upright. "'But if you will not listen to me, and will not do all these , and if you shall reject , and if your abhors my , so that you will not do all my , but break my , I also will do this to you: I will appoint terror over you, even consumption and fever, that shall consume the eyes, and make the to pine away. You will sow in , for your will eat it. I will set against you, and you will be struck before your . Those who hate you will you; and you will flee when no one pursues you. "'If you in spite of these things will not listen to me, then I will you seven times more for your . I will break the pride of your , and I will make your sky like iron, and your soil like bronze. Your strength will be spent in ; for your land won't yield its increase, neither will the trees of the land yield their fruit. "'If you walk contrary to me, and won't listen to me, then I will bring seven times more plagues on you according to your . I will send the wild animals among you, which will rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and make you few in number. Your roads will become desolate. "'If by these things you won't be turned back to me, but will walk contrary to me, then I will also walk contrary to you; and I will strike you, even I, seven times for your . I will bring a upon you that will execute the of . You will be gathered together within your cities, and I will send the pestilence among you. You will be into the hand of . When I break your of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall your bread again by weight. You shall eat, and not be satisfied. "'If you in spite of this won't listen to me, but walk contrary to me, then I will walk contrary to you in . I will also you seven times for your . You will eat of your sons, and you will eat of your daughters. I will destroy your , and cut down your , and cast your bodies upon the bodies of your idols; and will abhor you. I will lay your cities waste, and will bring your sanctuaries to desolation. I will not take delight in the sweet fragrance of your . I will bring the land into desolation, and your who in it will be astonished at it. I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw out after you. Your land will be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste. Then the land will enjoy its as long as it lies desolate and you are in your ' land. Even then the land will rest and enjoy its . As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, even the rest which it didn't have in your when you lived on it. "'As for those of you who are left, I will send a faintness into their in the lands of their . The sound of a driven leaf will put them to flight; and they shall flee, as one flees from . They will fall when no one pursues. They will stumble over one another, as it were before , when no one pursues. You will have no to stand before your . You will among the nations. The land of your will eat you up. Those of you who are left will pine away in their in your ' lands; and also in the of their fathers they shall pine away with them. "'If they their and the of their fathers, in their trespass which they trespassed against me; and also that because they walked contrary to me, I also walked contrary to them, and brought them into the land of their ; if then their is humbled, and they then accept the punishment of their , then I will remember my with , my with , and also my with ; and I will remember the land. The land also will be left by them, and will enjoy its while it lies desolate without them; and they will accept the punishment of their because they rejected my , and their abhorred . Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their , I will not reject them, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly and to break my with them; for I am their . But I will for their sake remember of their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of in the sight of the nations, that I might be their . I am .'" These are the , , and laws, which made between him and the in by .
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.