World English Bible · Egypt and Sinai
Numbers 17
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1 spoke to , saying, "Speak to the , and take from them, one for each fathers' house, of all their princes according to their fathers' houses, twelve . Write each man's name on his . You shall write name on . There shall be one for each head of their fathers' houses. You shall lay them up in the before , where I meet with you. It shall happen that the of the man whom I shall choose shall bud. I will make the murmurings of the , which they murmur against you, cease from me." 6 spoke to the ; and all their princes gave him , for each prince one, according to their fathers' houses, a total of twelve . was among their . laid up the before in the Tent of the . On the next day, went into the Tent of the ; and behold, for the had sprouted, budded, produced blossoms, and bore ripe almonds. 9 brought out all the from before to all the . They looked, and each man took his . said to , "Put back the of before , to be kept for a token against the children of rebellion; that you may make an end of their complaining against me, that they not ." 11 did so. As commanded him, so he did. The spoke to , saying, "Behold, we ! We are undone! We are all undone! Everyone who keeps approaching , dies! Will we all ?"
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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.