King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Numbers 10
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1And spake unto , saying, Make thee two of silver; of a whole piece shalt thou make them: that thou mayest use them for the calling of , and for the journeying of the camps. And when they shall blow with them, all shall assemble themselves to thee at the door of the of . And if they blow but with one , then the princes, which are heads of the thousands of Israel, shall gather themselves unto thee. When ye blow an alarm, then the camps that lie on the east parts shall go forward. When ye blow an alarm the second time, then the camps that lie on the south side shall take their journey: they shall blow an alarm for their journeys. But when is to be gathered together, ye shall blow, but ye shall not sound an alarm. And the sons of , the priests, shall blow with the ; and they shall be to you for an for ever throughout your generations. And if ye go to war in your land against that oppresseth you, then ye shall blow an alarm with the ; and ye shall be remembered before your , and ye shall be from your . Also in the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, and in the beginnings of your months, ye shall blow with the over your , and over the of your ; that they may be to you for a memorial before your : I am your . And it came to pass on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year, that the cloud was taken up from off the of the . And the took their journeys out of of Sinai; and the cloud rested in of . And they first took their journey according to the of by the hand of . In the first place went the standard of the camp of the children of Judah according to their armies: and over his host was the son of . And over the host of the tribe of the children of was Nethaneel the son of . And over the host of the tribe of the children of was the son of . And the was taken down; and the sons of and the sons of set forward, bearing the . And the standard of the camp of set forward according to their armies: and over his host was the son of . And over the host of the tribe of the children of was the son of . And over the host of the tribe of the children of Gad was the son of . And the set forward, bearing : and the other did set up the against they came. And the standard of the camp of the children of set forward according to their armies: and over his host was the son of . And over the host of the tribe of the children of was the son of . And over the host of the tribe of the children of was the son of . And the standard of the camp of the children of Dan set forward, which was the rereward of all the camps throughout their hosts: and over his host was the son of . And over the host of the tribe of the children of Asher was the son of Ocran. And over the host of the tribe of the children of was the son of . Thus were the journeyings of the according to their armies, when they set forward. And said unto Hobab, the son of the , ’ in law, We are journeying unto the place of which said, I will give it you: come thou with us, and we will do thee good: for hath spoken good concerning Israel. And he said unto him, I will not go; but I will depart to mine own land, and to my kindred. And he said, Leave us not, I thee; forasmuch as thou knowest how we are to encamp in , and thou mayest be to us instead of eyes. And it shall be, if thou go with us, yea, it shall be, that what goodness shall do unto us, the same will we do unto thee. And they departed from the mount of three days’ journey: and the of went before them in the three days’ journey, to search out a for them. And the cloud of was upon them by day, when they went out of the camp. And it came to pass, when the ark set forward, that said, Rise up, , and let thine be scattered; and let them that hate thee flee before thee. And when it rested, he said, Return, O , unto the many thousands of Israel.
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.