King James Version · The united kingdom
Psalms 8
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To the upon , . O our , how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy above . Out of the of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine , that thou mightest still and the . When I consider thy , the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and , that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the , and hast him with and . Thou madest him to over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things : All sheep and oxen, yea, and the of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the of the seas. O our , how excellent is thy name in all the earth!
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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