King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Numbers 21
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere. The ✦ marks a verse the New Testament takes up.
And when king the , which dwelt in the south, heard tell that Israel came by of the spies; then he fought against Israel, and took some of them prisoners. And Israel a unto , and said, If thou wilt indeed this people into my hand, then I will their cities. And hearkened to the voice of Israel, and up ; and they them and their cities: and he called the name of the place . And they journeyed from by of , to compass the land of : and the of the people was much discouraged because of . And the people spake against , and against , Wherefore have ye brought us up out of to in ? for there is , neither is there any water; and our loatheth this bread. And sent among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel . Therefore the people came to , and said, We have , for we have spoken against , and against thee; unto , that he take away the from us. And for the people. And said unto , Make thee a , and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And made a of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a had bitten any man, when he beheld of brass, he lived. And the set forward, and pitched in . 11And they journeyed from , and pitched at Ije–abarim, in which is before , toward the sunrising. From thence they removed, and pitched in the valley of Zared. From thence they removed, and pitched on the other side of , which is in that cometh out of the coasts of the : for is the border of , between and the . Wherefore it is said in the book of the wars of , What he did in , and in the brooks of , And at the stream of the brooks that goeth down to the dwelling of Ar, and lieth upon the border of . And from thence they went to Beer: that is the well whereof spake unto , Gather the people together, and I will give them water. Then Israel sang this song, Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it: The princes digged the well, the nobles of the people digged it, by the direction of the lawgiver, with their staves. And from they went to : 19And from to : and from to : And from in the valley, that is in the country of , to the top of , which looketh toward Jeshimon. And Israel sent unto king of the , saying, Let me pass through thy land: we will not turn into the fields, or into the vineyards; we will not drink of the waters of the well: but we will go along by the king’s high way, until we be past thy borders. And would not suffer Israel to pass through his border: but gathered all his people together, and went out against Israel into : and he came to , and fought against Israel. And Israel smote him with the edge of , and his land from unto , even unto : for the border of was strong. And Israel took all these cities: and Israel dwelt in all the cities of the , in , and in all the villages thereof. 26For was the city of the king of the , who had fought against the former king of , and taken all his land out of his hand, even unto . Wherefore they that speak in say, Come into , let the city of be built and prepared: For there is a gone out of , a flame from the city of : it hath consumed Ar of , and the lords of the of . Woe to thee, ! thou art undone, O people of : he hath given his sons that escaped, and his daughters, into unto king of the . We have shot at them; is even unto , and we have laid them waste even unto Nophah, which reacheth unto . Thus Israel dwelt in the land of the . And sent to spy out Jaazer, and they took the villages thereof, and drove out the that were there. And they turned and went up by of : and the king of went out against them, he, and all his people, to the battle at . And said unto , Fear him not: for I have him into thy hand, and all his people, and his land; and thou shalt do to him as thou didst unto king of the , which dwelt at . So they smote him, and his sons, and all his people, until there was none left him alive: and they his land.
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.