World English Bible · Egypt and Sinai
Numbers 35
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spoke to in by at , saying, "Command the to give to the cities to in out of their . You shall give pasture lands for the cities around them to the . They shall have the cities to in. Their pasture lands shall be for their livestock, and for their possessions, and for all their animals. 4"The pasture lands of the cities, which you shall give to the , shall be from the wall of the city and outward one thousand around it. 5You shall measure outside of the city for the east side two thousand , and for the south side two thousand , and for the west side two thousand , and for the north side two thousand , the city being in the middle. This shall be the pasture lands of their cities. "The cities which you shall give to the , they shall be the six , which you shall give for the man slayer to flee to. Besides them you shall give forty-two cities. All the cities which you shall give to the shall be forty-eight cities together with their pasture lands. Concerning the cities which you shall give of the possession of the , from the many you shall take many, and from the few you shall take few. Everyone according to his which he inherits shall give some of his cities to the ." 9 spoke to , saying, "Speak to the , and tell them, 'When you pass over into the land of , then you shall appoint for yourselves cities to be for you, that the man slayer who kills any person unwittingly may flee there. The cities shall be for your refuge from the , that the man slayer not until he stands before for . 13The cities which you shall give shall be for you six . You shall give three cities beyond , and you shall give three cities in the land of . They shall be . These six cities shall be refuge for the , for the , and for the living among them, that everyone who kills any person unwittingly may flee there. "'But if he struck him with an instrument of iron, so that he , he is a . The shall surely be put to . If he struck him with a stone in the hand, by which a man may , and he , he is a . The shall surely be put to . 18Or if he struck him with a weapon of wood in the hand, by which a man may , and he , he is a . The shall surely be put to . The shall himself put the to . When he meets him, he shall put him to . If he shoved him out of hatred, or hurled something at him while lying in wait, so that he , 21or in hostility struck him with his hand, so that he , he who struck him shall surely be put to . He is a . The shall put the to when he meets him. "'But if he shoved him suddenly without hostility, or hurled on him anything without lying in wait, 23or with any stone, by which a man may , not seeing him, and cast it on him so that he , and he was not his enemy and not seeking his harm, then shall judge between the striker and the according to these . shall the man slayer out of the hand of the , and shall restore him to his , where he had fled. He shall therein until the of the , who was with the oil. 26"'But if the man slayer shall at any time go beyond the border of his where he flees, and the finds him outside of the border of his , and the kills the man slayer, he shall not be guilty of , because he should have remained in his until the of the . But after the of the , the man slayer shall return into the land of his possession. "'These things shall be for a and to you throughout your generations in all your dwellings. "'Whoever kills any person, the shall be slain based on the of ; but one shall not testify alone against any person so that he dies. "'Moreover you shall take no for the life of a who is guilty of . He shall surely be put to . "'You shall take no for him who has fled to his , that he may come again to in the land before the of the priest. "'So you shall not pollute the land where you live; for pollutes the land. No atonement can be made for the land for that is shed in it, but by of him who shed it. You shall not defile the land which you inhabit, where I ; for I, , among the .'"
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. 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.