World English Bible · The patriarchs
Genesis 13
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went up out of —he, his wife, all that he had, and with him—into the South. was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. He went on his journeys from the South as far as , to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between and , to the place of the , which he had made there at the first. There called on name. also, who went with , had flocks, herds, and tents. The land was not able to bear them, that they might live together; for their possessions were so great that they couldn't live together. There was strife between the herdsmen of livestock and the herdsmen of livestock. and the lived in the land at that time. said to , "Please, let there be no strife between you and me, and between your herdsmen and my herdsmen; for we are relatives. Isn't the whole land before you? Please separate yourself from me. If you go to the left hand, then I will go to the right. Or if you go to , then I will go to the left." lifted up his eyes, and saw all the plain of , that it was well-watered everywhere, before destroyed and , like the garden of , like the land of , as you go to . So chose the Plain of for himself. traveled east, and they separated themselves from one another. lived in the land of , and lived in the cities of the plain, and moved his tent as far as . Now the men of were exceedingly and against . said to , after was separated from him, "Now, lift up your eyes, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for I will give all the land which you see to you and to . I will make as of the earth, so that if a man can count of the earth, then may also be counted. Arise, walk through the land in its length and in its width; for I will give it to you." moved his tent, and came and lived by the oaks of , which are in , and built an there to .
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The world at this moment · The patriarchs, 2000 BC to 1600 BC ›
Abraham's family as herdsmen among settled Canaanite city-states, in a world where Egypt and Mesopotamia are the great powers and Canaan is the corridor between them.
- Mesopotamia
- Abraham's own century is Hammurabi's. The great empire of Ur has already fallen, and Babylon rises under a king who published a law code on a stone pillar for everyone to see. Reading Genesis alongside Hammurabi's laws is illuminating in both directions: some provisions are strikingly similar, and the places where Israel's later law diverges are the places worth stopping at.
- Egypt
- The Middle Kingdom, wealthy, bureaucratic, and organised around the Nile flood. Egyptian tomb paintings from this period show Semitic traders arriving with donkeys and striped cloaks, which is more or less the picture Genesis gives of a family going down to Egypt in a famine. Toward the end of the era the Hyksos, rulers of Semitic origin, take the delta.
- Anatolia and the Aegean
- Assyrian merchants run a long-distance trading colony at Kanesh in Anatolia, leaving thousands of clay letters about copper, tin, and debt. On Crete the Minoan palaces are at their height, with plumbing, frescoes, and a script nobody has yet read.
- Further afield
- The Indus Valley cities are in decline after centuries of grid-planned streets and drains. In China the Erlitou culture is building the first palace complexes. Stonehenge is standing and already old.
All of Genesis