King James Version · The united kingdom

Psalms 95

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O come, let us sing unto : let us make a joyful noise to of our . Let us come before his with , and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. For is a great , and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land. O come, let us and : let us kneel before our maker. For he is our ; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not , as in the provocation, and as in the day of in : When your fathers me, proved me, and saw my work. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their , and they have not known my ways: Unto whom I sware in my that they should not enter into .

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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