King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Numbers 12
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
And and spake against because of the woman whom he had married: for he had married an woman. And they said, Hath indeed spoken only by ? hath he not spoken also by us? And heard it. (Now the man was very meek, above all the men which were upon the of the earth.) And spake suddenly unto , and unto , and unto , Come out ye three unto the of . And they three came out. And came down in of the cloud, and stood in the door of the , and called and : and they both came forth. And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a among you, I will make myself known unto him in a , and will speak unto him in a . My servant is not so, who is in all mine house. With him will I speak to , even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of shall he behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant ? And the of was kindled against them; and he departed. And the cloud departed from off the ; and, behold, became , white as snow: and looked upon , and, behold, she was . And said unto , Alas, my , I beseech thee, lay not the upon us, wherein we have done foolishly, and wherein we have . Let her not be as one , of whom is half consumed when he cometh out of his mother’s . And cried unto , saying, Heal her now, O , I beseech thee. And said unto , If her had but spit in her , should she not be seven days? let her be shut out from the camp seven days, and after that let her be received in again. And was shut out from the camp seven days: and the people journeyed not till was brought in again. And afterward the people removed from , and pitched in of .
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.