King James Version · The patriarchs
Genesis 20
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And journeyed from thence toward the south country, and dwelled between and , and sojourned in . And said of his wife, She is my sister: and king of sent, and took . But came to in a by night, and said to him, Behold, thou art but a man, for the woman which thou hast taken; for she is a man’s wife. But had not come near her: and he said, , wilt thou also a nation? Said he not unto me, She is my sister? and she, even she herself said, He is my brother: in the integrity of and innocency of my hands have I done this. And said unto him in a , Yea, I know that thou didst this in the integrity of thy ; for I also withheld thee from sinning against me: therefore suffered I thee not to touch her. Now therefore restore the man his wife; for he is a , and he shall for thee, and thou shalt live: and if thou restore her not, know thou that thou shalt surely , thou, and all that are thine. 8Therefore rose early in the morning, and called all his servants, and told all these things in their ears: and the men were sore afraid. Then called , and said unto him, What hast thou done unto us? and what have I offended thee, that thou hast brought on me and on my kingdom a great ? thou hast done deeds unto me that ought not to be done. 10And said unto , What sawest thou, that thou hast done this thing? And said, Because I thought, Surely is not in this place; and they will me for my wife’s sake. And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of , but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife. And it came to pass, when caused me to wander from ’s house, that I said unto her, This is thy kindness which thou shalt shew unto me; at every place whither we shall come, say of me, He is my brother. And took sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and womenservants, and gave them unto , and restored him his wife. And said, Behold, my land is before thee: where it pleaseth thee. And unto he said, Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver: behold, he is to thee a covering of the eyes, unto all that are with thee, and with all other: thus she was reproved. So unto : and healed , and his wife, and his maidservants; and they children. For had closed up all the wombs of the house of , because of ’s wife.
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 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