King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Numbers 30
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And spake unto the heads of the tribes concerning the , saying, This is the thing which hath commanded. If a man a unto , or an to bind his with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his . 3If a woman also a unto , and bind herself by a bond, being in her ’s house in her youth; 4And her hear her , and her bond wherewith she hath bound her , and her shall hold his peace at her: then all her shall stand, and every bond wherewith she hath bound her shall stand. But if her disallow her in the day that he heareth; not any of her , or of her bonds wherewith she hath bound her , shall stand: and shall forgive her, because her disallowed her. And if she had at all an husband, when she , or uttered ought out of her , wherewith she bound her ; 7And her husband heard it, and held his peace at her in the day that he heard it: then her shall stand, and her bonds wherewith she bound her shall stand. But if her husband disallowed her on the day that he heard it; then he shall make her which she , and that which she uttered with her , wherewith she bound her , of none effect: and shall forgive her. But every of a , and of her that is , wherewith they have bound their , shall stand against her. 10And if she in her husband’s house, or bound her by a bond with an ; 11And her husband heard it, and held his peace at her, and disallowed her not: then all her shall stand, and every bond wherewith she bound her shall stand. But if her husband hath utterly made them void on the day he heard them; then whatsoever proceeded out of her concerning her , or concerning the bond of her , shall not stand: her husband hath made them void; and shall forgive her. Every , and every binding to afflict the , her husband may establish it, or her husband may make it void. 14But if her husband altogether hold his peace at her from day to day; then he establisheth all her , or all her bonds, which are upon her: he confirmeth them, because he held his peace at her in the day that he heard them. But if he shall any ways make them void after that he hath heard them; then he shall bear her . These are the , which commanded , between a man and his wife, between and his daughter, being yet in her youth in her ’s house.
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.