King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Numbers 8
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1And spake unto , saying, Speak unto , and say unto him, When thou lightest the lamps, the seven lamps shall give over against the candlestick. 3And did so; he lighted the lamps thereof over against the candlestick, as commanded . And this work of the candlestick was of beaten gold, unto the shaft thereof, unto the flowers thereof, was beaten work: according unto the pattern which had shewed , so he made the candlestick. 5And spake unto , saying, Take the from among the , and cleanse them. And thus shalt thou do unto them, to cleanse them: Sprinkle water of purifying upon them, and let them shave all their , and let them wash their clothes, and so make themselves clean. Then let them take a young bullock with his meat , even mingled with oil, and another young bullock shalt thou take for a . And thou shalt bring the before the of : and thou shalt gather the whole of the together: And thou shalt bring the before : and the shall put their hands upon the : And shall offer the before for an of the , that they may execute the of . And the shall lay their hands upon the heads of the bullocks: and thou shalt offer the one for a , and the other for a , unto , to make an atonement for the . And thou shalt set the before , and before his sons, and offer them for an unto . Thus shalt thou separate the from among the : and the shall be mine. And after that shall the go in to do the of the of : and thou shalt cleanse them, and offer them for an . For they are wholly given unto me from among the ; instead of such as open every , even instead of of all the , have I taken them unto me. For all of the are mine, both man and beast: on the day that I smote every in the land of I them for myself. 18And I have taken the for all of the . And I have given the as a gift to and to his sons from among the , to do the of the in the of , and to make an atonement for the : that there be no plague among the , when the come nigh unto . 20And , and , and all of the , did to the according unto all that commanded concerning the , so did the unto them. And the were purified, and they washed their clothes; and offered them as an before ; and made an atonement for them to cleanse them. And after that went the in to do their in the of before , and before his sons: as had commanded concerning the , so did they unto them. 23And spake unto , saying, This is it that belongeth unto the : from twenty and five years old and upward they shall go in to wait upon the of the of : And from the age of fifty years they shall cease upon the thereof, and shall no more: But shall minister with their brethren in the of , to keep the charge, and shall do no . Thus shalt thou do unto the touching their charge.
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.