World English Bible · The united kingdom
Psalms 12
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; upon an eight-stringed lyre. . Help, ; for the godly man ceases. For the fail from among the children of men. Everyone lies to his neighbor. They speak with flattering , and with a double . May all flattering , and that boasts, who have said, "With our we will prevail. Our are our own. Who is over us?" "Because of the of the weak and because of the groaning of , I will now arise," ; "I will set him in safety from those who malign him." words are flawless words, as silver refined in a furnace, purified seven times. You will keep them, . You will preserve them from this generation . walk on every side, when what is vile is exalted among the sons of men.
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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.
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