World English Bible · Egypt and Sinai
Numbers 19
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1 spoke to and to , saying, "This is the of which has commanded. Tell the to bring you a red heifer without spot, in which is , and which was never yoked. You shall give her to the priest, and he shall bring her outside of the camp, and one shall kill her before . the priest shall take some of her with his finger, and sprinkle her toward the front of the seven times. One shall burn the heifer in his sight; her skin, and her meat, and her , with her dung, shall he burn. The priest shall take cedar wood, , and scarlet, and cast it into the middle of the burning of the heifer. Then the priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp, and the priest shall be . 8He who burns her shall wash his clothes in water, and bathe his in water, and shall be . "A man who is clean shall gather up the of the heifer, and lay them up outside of the camp in a clean place; and it shall be kept for of the for use in water for cleansing impurity. It is a . He who gathers the of the heifer shall wash his clothes, and be . It shall be to the , and to the who lives as a among them, for a . "He who touches body of any man shall be seven days. He shall purify himself with water on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean; but if he doesn't purify himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean. Whoever touches a person, the body of a man who has , and doesn't purify himself, defiles ; and that from Israel; because the water for impurity was not sprinkled on him, he shall be . His uncleanness is yet on him. 14"This is when a man dies in a tent: everyone who comes into the tent, and everyone who is in the tent, shall be seven days. Every open , which has no covering bound on it, is . "Whoever in the open field touches one who is slain with a , or a body, or a bone of a man, or a , shall be seven days. "For the , they shall take of the of the burning of the ; and running water shall be poured on them in a . A clean person shall take , dip it in the water, and sprinkle it on the tent, on all the vessels, on the persons who were there, and on him who touched the bone, or the slain, or , or the . The clean person shall sprinkle on the on the third day, and on the seventh day. On the seventh day, he shall purify him. He shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at evening. But the man who shall be , and shall not purify himself, that from among , because he has defiled of . The water for impurity has not been sprinkled on him. He is . It shall be a perpetual to them. He who sprinkles the water for impurity shall wash his clothes, and he who touches the water for impurity shall be . "Whatever the person touches shall be ; and the that touches it shall be ."
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.