World English Bible · Egypt and Sinai
Numbers 12
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and spoke against because of the woman whom he had married; for he had married a woman. They said, "Has indeed spoken only with ? Hasn't he spoken also with us?" And heard it. Now the man was very humble, more than all the men who were on the surface of the earth. spoke suddenly to , to , and to , "You three come out to the !" The three of them came out. came down in a , and stood at the door of the Tent, and called and ; and they both came forward. He said, "Now hear my words. If there is a among you, I, , will make myself known to him in a . I will speak with him in a . My servant is not so. He is in all my house. With him, I will speak to , even plainly, and not in ; and he shall see form. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant, against ?" burned against them; and he departed. The cloud departed from over the Tent; and behold, was , as white as snow. looked at , and behold, she was . said to , "Oh, my , please don't count this against us, in which we have done foolishly, and in which we have . Let her not, I , be as one , of whom is half consumed when he comes out of his mother's ." cried to , saying, "Heal her, , I beg you!" said to , "If her had but spit in her , shouldn't she be seven days? Let her be shut up outside of the camp seven days, and after that she shall be brought in again." was shut up outside of the camp seven days, and the people didn't travel until was brought in again. Afterward the people traveled from , and encamped in of .
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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.