King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Numbers 14
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And all lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night. And all the murmured against and against : and the whole said unto them, Would that we had in the land of ! or would we had in this ! And wherefore hath brought us unto this land, to fall , that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into ? And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into . Then and fell on their faces before all of of the . And the son of , and the son of , which were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes: And they spake unto all the company of the , saying, The land, which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land. If delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with . Only rebel not ye against , neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defence is departed from them, and is with us: fear them not. But all bade stone them with stones. And appeared in the of before all the . And said unto , How long will this people provoke me? and how long will it be ere they me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them? I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they. And said unto , Then the shall hear it, (for thou broughtest up this people in thy might from among them;) And they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land: for they have heard that thou art among this people, that thou art seen to , and that thy cloud standeth over them, and that thou goest before them, by day time in a pillar of a cloud, and in a by night. Now if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying, Because was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in . And now, I beseech thee, let the of my be great, according as thou hast spoken, saying, is , and of great mercy, forgiving and , and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. Pardon, I beseech thee, the of this people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people, from even until now. And said, I have pardoned according to thy word: But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with . Because all those men which have seen my , and my miracles, which I did in and in , and have me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice; Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it: But my servant , because he had another with him, and hath followed me fully, him will I bring into the land whereinto he went; and shall possess it. (Now and dwelt in the valley.) To morrow turn you, and get you into by of . 26And spake unto and unto , saying, How long shall I bear with this evil , which murmur against me? I have heard the murmurings of the , which they murmur against me. Say unto them, As truly as I live, saith , as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you: Your carcases shall fall in this ; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, which have murmured against me, Doubtless ye shall not come into the land, concerning which I sware to make you therein, the son of , and the son of . But your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, them will I bring in, and they shall know the land which ye have despised. But as for you, your carcases, they shall fall in this . And your children shall wander in forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in . After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your , even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise. I have said, I will surely do it unto all this evil , that are gathered together against me: in this they shall be consumed, and there they shall . And the men, which sent to search the land, who returned, and made all to murmur against him, by bringing up a slander upon the land, Even those men that did bring up the evil report upon the land, by the plague before . But the son of , and the son of , which were of the men that went to search the land, lived still. And told these sayings unto all the : and the people mourned greatly. And they rose up early in the morning, and gat them up into the top of the mountain, saying, Lo, we be here, and will go up unto the place which hath promised: for we have . And said, Wherefore now do ye transgress the of ? but it shall not prosper. Go not up, for is not among you; that ye be not smitten before your . For and are there before you, and ye shall fall : because ye are turned away from , therefore will not be with you. But they presumed to go up unto the hill top: nevertheless the of , and , departed not out of the camp. Then came down, and which dwelt in that hill, and smote them, and discomfited them, even unto .
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.