World English Bible · Egypt and Sinai
Numbers 9
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spoke to in of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of , saying, "Let the keep in its appointed season. On the fourteenth day of this month, at evening, you shall keep it in its appointed season. You shall keep it according to all its and according to all its ." 4 told the that they should keep . They kept in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, in of Sinai. According to all that commanded , so the did. There were certain men who were because of body of a man, so that they could not keep on that day, and they came before and on that day. Those men said to him, "We are because of body of a man. Why are we kept back, that we may not offer the of in its appointed season among the ?" answered them, "Wait, that I may hear what will command concerning you." 9 spoke to , saying, "Say to the , 'If any man of you or of your generations is by reason of a body, or is on a journey far away, he shall still keep to . In the second month, on the fourteenth day at evening they shall keep it; they shall eat it with and bitter herbs. They shall leave none of it until the morning, nor break a bone of it. According to all the of they shall keep it. But the man who is clean, and is not on a journey, and fails to keep , that from his people. Because he didn't offer the of in its appointed season, that man shall bear his . "'If a lives among you and to keep to , then he shall do so according to the of , and according to its . You shall have one , both for the and for him who is born in the land.'" On the day that the was up, the , even the Tent of the . At evening it was over the , as it were the appearance of , until morning. So it was continually. it, and the appearance of by night. Whenever the cloud was taken up from over the Tent, then after that the traveled; and in the place where the cloud remained, there the encamped. At the of , the traveled, and at the of they encamped. As long as the cloud remained on the they remained encamped. When the cloud stayed on the many days, then the kept command, and didn't travel. 20Sometimes the cloud was days on the ; then according to the of they remained encamped, and according to the of they traveled. Sometimes the cloud was from evening until morning; and when the cloud was taken up in the morning, they traveled; or by day and by night, when the cloud was taken up, they traveled. Whether it was two days, or a month, or a year that the cloud stayed on the , remaining on it, the remained encamped, and didn't travel; but when it was taken up, they traveled. At the of they encamped, and at the of they traveled. They kept command, at the of by .
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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.