King James Version · The united kingdom
Proverbs 2
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My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my with thee; So that thou incline thine ear unto , and apply thine to ; Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for ; If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid ; Then shalt thou understand the , and find the knowledge of . For giveth : out of his cometh knowledge and . He layeth up sound for : he is a buckler to them that walk uprightly. He keepeth the of , and preserveth of his . Then shalt thou understand , and , and equity; yea, every good path. When entereth into thine , and knowledge is pleasant unto thy ; Discretion shall preserve thee, shall keep thee: To thee from of the evil man, from the man that speaketh froward things; Who leave the of uprightness, to walk in the ways of ; Who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of ; Whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their : To thee from the strange woman, even from the which flattereth with her words; Which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth of her . For her house inclineth unto , and her unto . None that go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the of life. That thou mayest walk in of good men, and keep the of . For the upright shall in the land, and the perfect shall in it. But from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.
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.