King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Numbers 9
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And spake unto in of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they were come out of the land of , saying, Let the also keep at his appointed season. In the fourteenth day of this month, at even, ye shall keep it in his appointed season: according to all the rites of it, and according to all the ceremonies thereof, shall ye keep it. 4And spake unto the , that they should keep . And they kept on the fourteenth day of the first month at even in of Sinai: according to all that commanded , so did the . And there were certain men, who were defiled by body of a man, that they could not keep on that day: and they came before and before on that day: And those men said unto him, We are defiled by body of a man: wherefore are we kept back, that we may not offer an of in his appointed season among the ? And said unto them, Stand still, and I will hear what will command concerning you. 9And spake unto , saying, Speak unto the , saying, If any man of you or of your posterity shall be by reason of a body, or be in a journey afar off, yet he shall keep unto . The fourteenth day of the second month at even they shall keep it, and eat it with and bitter herbs. They shall leave none of it unto the morning, nor break any bone of it: according to all the of they shall keep it. But the man that is clean, and is not in a journey, and forbeareth to keep , even the same from among his people: because he brought not the of in his appointed season, that man shall bear his . And if a shall sojourn among you, and will keep unto ; according to the of , and according to the manner thereof, so shall he do: ye shall have one , both for the , and for him that was born in the land. And on the day that the was reared up the , namely, the tent of the : and at even there was upon the as it were the appearance of , until the morning. So it was alway: it by day, and the appearance of by night. And when the cloud was taken up from the , then after that the journeyed: and in the place where the cloud abode, there the pitched their tents. At the of the journeyed, and at the of they pitched: as long as the cloud abode upon the they rested in their tents. And when the cloud tarried long upon the many days, then the kept the charge of , and journeyed not. 20And so it was, when the cloud was days upon the ; according to the of they abode in their tents, and according to the of they journeyed. And so it was, when the cloud abode from even unto the morning, and that the cloud was taken up in the morning, then they journeyed: whether it was by day or by night that the cloud was taken up, they journeyed. Or whether it were two days, or a month, or a year, that the cloud tarried upon the , remaining thereon, the abode in their tents, and journeyed not: but when it was taken up, they journeyed. At the of they rested in the tents, and at the of they journeyed: they kept the charge of , at the of by the hand of .
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.