King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Numbers 32
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Now the children of and the children of Gad had a very great multitude of cattle: and when they saw the land of , and the land of , that, behold, the place was a place for cattle; 2The children of Gad and the children of came and spake unto , and to the priest, and unto the princes of , saying, , and , and , and , and , and , and Shebam, and , and Beon, Even the country which smote before of Israel, is a land for cattle, and thy servants have cattle: Wherefore, said they, if we have found in thy sight, let this land be given unto thy servants for a possession, and bring us not over Jordan. And said unto the children of Gad and to the children of , Shall your brethren go to war, and shall ye sit here? And wherefore discourage ye of the from going over into the land which hath given them? Thus did your fathers, when I sent them from to see the land. For when they went up unto the valley of , and saw the land, they discouraged of the , that they should not go into the land which had given them. And ’s was kindled the same time, and he sware, saying, Surely none of the men that came up out of , from twenty years old and upward, shall see the land which I sware unto , unto , and unto ; because they have not wholly followed me: the son of the Kenezite, and the son of : for they have wholly followed . And ’s was kindled against Israel, and he made them wander in forty years, until all the generation, that had done evil in the sight of , was consumed. And, behold, ye are up in your fathers’ stead, an increase of men, to augment yet the of toward Israel. For if ye turn away from after him, he will yet again leave them in ; and ye shall destroy all this people. And they came near unto him, and said, We will build sheepfolds here for our cattle, and cities for our little ones: But we ourselves will go ready armed before the , until we have brought them unto their place: and our little ones shall in the fenced cities because of the inhabitants of the land. We will not return unto our houses, until the have every man his . For we will not with them on yonder side Jordan, or forward; because our is fallen to us on this side Jordan eastward. And said unto them, If ye will do this thing, if ye will go armed before to war, 21And will go all of you armed over Jordan before , until he hath driven out his from before him, And the land be subdued before : then afterward ye shall return, and be guiltless before , and before Israel; and this land shall be your possession before . But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have against : and be sure your will find you out. Build you cities for your little ones, and folds for your sheep; and do that which hath proceeded out of your . And the children of Gad and the children of spake unto , saying, Thy servants will do as my commandeth. Our little ones, our wives, our flocks, and all our cattle, shall be there in the cities of : But thy servants will pass over, every man armed for war, before to battle, as my saith. So concerning them commanded the priest, and the son of , and the chief fathers of the tribes of the : 29And said unto them, If the children of Gad and the children of will pass with you over Jordan, every man armed to battle, before , and the land shall be subdued before you; then ye shall give them the land of for a possession: But if they will not pass over with you armed, they shall have possessions among you in the land of . 31And the children of Gad and the children of answered, saying, As hath said unto thy servants, so will we do. 32We will pass over armed before into the land of , that the possession of our on this side Jordan may be ours. And gave unto them, even to the children of Gad, and to the children of , and unto half the tribe of the son of , of king of the , and of king of , the land, with the cities thereof in the coasts, even the cities of the country round about. And the children of Gad built , and , and , And Atroth, Shophan, and Jaazer, and Jogbehah, And , and Beth–haran, fenced cities: and folds for sheep. And the children of built , and , and Kirjathaim, And , and , (their names being changed,) and Shibmah: and gave other names unto the cities which they builded. And the children of the son of went to , and took it, and dispossessed the which was in it. And gave unto the son of ; and he dwelt therein. And the son of went and took the small towns thereof, and called them Havoth–jair. And Nobah went and took Kenath, and the villages thereof, and called it Nobah, after his own name.
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.