King James Version · The united kingdom
Psalms 53
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To the upon , Maschil, . The fool hath said in , There is no . Corrupt are they, and have done : there is none that doeth good. looked down from upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek . Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Have the workers of no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread: they have not called upon . There were they in great fear, where no fear was: for hath scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee: thou hast put them to , because hath despised them. Oh that the of Israel were come out of ! When bringeth back of his people, shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad.
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.
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