World English Bible · Egypt and Sinai
Numbers 13
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1 spoke to , saying, "Send men, that they may spy out the land of , which I give to the . Of every tribe of their fathers, you shall send a man, every one a prince among them." sent them from of according to the of . All of them were men who were heads of the . 4These were their names: Of the tribe of , the son of Zaccur. 5Of the tribe of , the son of . Of the tribe of Judah, the son of . 7Of the tribe of , the son of . Of the tribe of , the son of . 9Of the tribe of , the son of . 10Of the tribe of , the son of . 11Of the tribe of , of the tribe of , the son of . 12Of the tribe of Dan, the son of Gemalli. 13Of the tribe of Asher, the son of . 14Of the tribe of , the son of . 15Of the tribe of Gad, the son of . These are the names of the men who sent to spy out the land. called the son of . sent them to spy out the land of , and said to them, "Go up this way by the South, and go up into the hill country. See the land, what it is; and the people who therein, whether they are strong or weak, whether they are few or many; 19and what the land is that they in, whether it is good or bad; and what cities they are that they in, whether in camps, or in strongholds; and what the land is, whether it is fertile or , whether there is wood therein, or not. Be courageous, and bring some of the fruit of the land." Now the time was the time of the first-ripe grapes. So they went up, and spied out the land from of to , to the entrance of . They went up by the South, and came to ; and , Sheshai, and Talmai, the children of , were there. (Now was built seven years before in .) They came to the valley of , and cut down from there a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bore it on a between two. They also brought some of the pomegranates and figs. 24That place was called the valley of , because of the cluster which the cut down from there. They returned from spying out the land at the end of forty days. They went and came to , to , and to all of the , to of , to ; and brought back word to them and to all . They showed them the fruit of the land. They told him, and said, "We came to the land where you sent us. Surely it flows with , and this is its fruit. However, the people who in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. Moreover, we saw the children of there. dwells in the land of the South. The , the , and the in the hill country. The dwells by the sea, and along the side of ." stilled the people before , and said, "Let's go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it!" But the men who went up with him said, "We aren't able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we." They brought up an evil report of the land which they had spied out to the , saying, "The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that eats up its inhabitants; and all the people who we saw in it are men of great stature. There we saw the , the sons of , who come from the . We were in our own sight as , and so we were in their sight."
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.