King James Version · The united kingdom
Psalms 21
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
To the , . The king shall joy in thy strength, O ; and in thy how greatly shall he rejoice! Thou hast given him ’s , and hast not withholden the request of his . . For thou preventest him with the of goodness: thou settest a of pure gold on his head. He asked life of thee, and thou gavest it him, even length of days . His is great in thy : and majesty hast thou laid upon him. For thou hast made him most for ever: thou hast made him exceeding glad with thy countenance. For the king trusteth in , and through the mercy of he shall not be moved. Thine hand shall find out all thine : thy shall find out those that hate thee. Thou shalt make them as a oven in the time of thine : shall swallow them up in his , and the shall devour them. Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth, and their from among the children of men. For they intended evil against thee: they imagined a mischievous device, which they are not able to perform. Therefore shalt thou make them turn their back, when thou shalt make ready thine arrows upon thy strings against the of them. Be thou exalted, , in thine own strength: so will we sing and thy .
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.
All of Psalms
123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990919293949596979899100101102103104105106107108109110111112113114115116117118119120121122123124125126127128129130131132133134135136137138139140141142143144145146147148149150