King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Numbers 20
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
Then came the , even the whole , into of in the first month: and the people abode in ; and there, and was buried there. And there was no water for : and they gathered themselves together against and against . And the people chode with , and spake, saying, Would that we had when our brethren before ! And why have ye brought up of into this , that we and our cattle should there? And wherefore have ye made us to come up out of , to bring us in unto this evil place? it is no place of , or of figs, or of , or of pomegranates; neither is there any water to drink. And and went from the of unto the door of the of , and they fell upon their faces: and appeared unto them. 7And spake unto , saying, Take the , and gather thou together, thou, and thy brother, and speak ye unto before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of : so thou shalt give and their drink. And took the from before , as he commanded him. And and gathered together before , and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this ? And lifted up his hand, and with his he smote twice: and the water came out abundantly, and drank, and their also. And spake unto and , Because ye me not, to me in the eyes of the , therefore ye shall not bring this into the land which I have given them. This is the water of ; because the strove with , and he was in them. And sent from unto the king of , Thus saith thy brother Israel, Thou knowest all the travail that hath befallen us: How our fathers went down into , and we have dwelt in a long time; and the vexed us, and our fathers: And when we cried unto , he heard our voice, and sent , and hath brought us forth out of : and, behold, we are in , a city in the uttermost of thy border: Let us pass, I thee, through thy country: we will not pass through the fields, or through the vineyards, neither will we drink of the water of the wells: we will go by the king’s high way, we will not turn to nor to the left, until we have passed thy borders. 18And said unto him, Thou shalt not pass by me, lest I come out against thee with . And the said unto him, We will go by the high way: and if I and my cattle drink of thy water, then I will pay for it: I will only, without doing any thing else, go through on my feet. And he said, Thou shalt not go through. And came out against him with much people, and with a strong hand. Thus refused to give Israel passage through his border: wherefore Israel turned away from him. And the , even the whole , journeyed from , and came unto . And spake unto and in , by the coast of the land of , saying, shall be gathered unto his people: for he shall not enter into the land which I have given unto the , because ye rebelled against my word at the water of . Take and his son, and bring them up unto : And strip of his garments, and put them upon his son: and shall be gathered unto his people, and shall there. 27And did as commanded: and they went up into in the sight of all . And stripped of his garments, and put them upon his son; and there in the top of the mount: and and came down from the mount. And when all saw that was , they mourned for thirty days, even all the .
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.