King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Numbers 23
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And said unto , Build me here seven , and prepare me here seven oxen and seven rams. And did as had spoken; and and offered on every a bullock and a ram. And said unto , Stand by thy , and I will go: peradventure will come to meet me: and whatsoever he sheweth me I will tell thee. And he went to an . And met : and he said unto him, I have prepared seven , and I have offered upon every a bullock and a ram. And put a word in ’s , and said, Return unto , and thus thou shalt speak. 6And he returned unto him, and, lo, he stood by his burnt , he, and all the princes of . And he took up his , and said, the king of hath brought me from , out of the mountains of the east, saying, Come, me , and come, defy Israel. How shall I , whom hath not ? or how shall I defy, whom hath not defied? For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: lo, the people shall alone, and shall not be among the nations. Who can count of , and the number of the fourth part of Israel? Let me the of , and let my last end be like his! And said unto , What hast thou done unto me? I took thee to mine , and, behold, thou hast them altogether. And he answered and said, Must I not take heed to speak that which hath put in my ? And said unto him, Come, I thee, with me unto another place, from whence thou mayest see them: thou shalt see but the utmost part of them, and shalt not see them all: and me them from thence. And he brought him into the field of Zophim, to the top of , and built seven , and offered a bullock and a ram on every . And he said unto , Stand here by thy , while I meet yonder. And met , and put a word in his , and said, Go again unto , and say thus. And when he came to him, behold, he stood by his , and the princes of with him. And said unto him, What hath spoken? And he took up his , and said, Rise up, , and hear; unto me, thou son of : is not a man, that he should lie; neither , that he should : hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? Behold, I have received to : and he hath ; and I cannot reverse it. He hath not beheld in , neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: his is with him, and the shout of a king is among them. brought them out of ; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn. Surely there is no enchantment against , neither is there any against Israel: according to this time it shall be said of and of Israel, What hath wrought! Behold, the people shall rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as a young lion: he shall not lie down until he eat of the prey, and drink of the slain. And said unto , Neither them at all, nor them at all. But answered and said unto , Told not I thee, saying, All that speaketh, that I must do? And said unto , Come, I thee, I will bring thee unto another place; peradventure it will please that thou mayest me them from thence. And brought unto the top of , that looketh toward Jeshimon. And said unto , Build me here seven , and prepare me here seven bullocks and seven rams. 30And did as had said, and offered a bullock and a ram on every .
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.