King James Version · The united kingdom
Proverbs 1
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The of , king of Israel; To know and ; to perceive the words of ; To receive the of , justice, and , and equity; To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion. A man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of shall attain unto counsels: To understand a , and the ; the words of , and their dark sayings. The is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise and . My son, hear the of thy , and forsake not of thy mother: For they shall be an ornament of unto thy head, and chains about thy neck. My son, if entice thee, consent thou not. If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for , let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause: Let us swallow them up alive as the ; and whole, as those that go down into : We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil: 14Cast in thy lot among us; let us all have one purse: My son, walk not thou in with them; refrain thy foot from their path: For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed . Surely in the net is spread in the sight of any bird. And they lay wait for their own ; they lurk privily for their own lives. So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; which taketh away the life of the owners thereof. crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets: She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the : in the city she uttereth her words, saying, How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? Turn you at my : behold, I will pour out unto you, I will make known my words unto you. Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; But ye have set at nought all my , and would none of my : I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; When your fear cometh as desolation, and your cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the : They would none of my : they despised all my . Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For the turning away of the simple shall them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.
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 · The united kingdom, 1050 BC to 931 BC ›
Saul, David, and Solomon. A rare window when both Egypt and Mesopotamia are weak, which is how a small kingdom in the corridor between them could briefly become a regional power.
- The power vacuum
- This is the whole political explanation for the united kingdom. Egypt is fragmented, Assyria is recovering but still local, the Hittites are gone, and nobody is in a position to object to a strong state in the corridor. It lasts about a century, and Israel's golden age fits exactly inside it.
- Phoenicia
- Tyre under Hiram is the commercial power of the coast, and supplies the cedar, the craftsmen, and the shipping for Solomon's building programme. The alliance is trade, not charity: Israel had grain and a land route, Tyre had timber and ships.
- Egypt
- Weak enough that a pharaoh gives a daughter in marriage to an Israelite king, which is the opposite of Egyptian practice in stronger centuries. Late in the era it recovers under a new house, and Shishak will invade within five years of Solomon's death.
- Further afield
- Greece is still in its dark age but beginning to recover, and will adopt the Phoenician alphabet within a century or two. Carthage is founded by settlers from Tyre by tradition in 814 BC. In the Americas the Olmec centre shifts to La Venta.