King James Version · The patriarchs
Genesis 26
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And there was a in the land, beside the first that was in the days of . And went unto king of the unto . And appeared unto him, and said, Go not down into ; in the land which I shall tell thee of: Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will thee; for unto thee, and unto thy , I will give all these countries, and I will perform the which I sware unto thy ; And I will make thy to multiply as the stars of , and will give unto thy all these countries; and in thy shall all the nations of the earth be ; Because that , and kept my charge, my , , and my laws. And dwelt in : And the men of the place asked him of his wife; and he said, She is my sister: for he feared to say, She is my wife; lest, said he, the men of the place should kill me for ; because she was fair to look upon. And it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that king of the looked out at a window, and saw, and, behold, was sporting with his wife. 9And called , and said, Behold, of a surety she is thy wife: and how saidst thou, She is my sister? And said unto him, Because I said, Lest I for her. And said, What is this thou hast done unto us? one of the people might lightly have lien with thy wife, and thou shouldest have brought guiltiness upon us. And charged all his people, saying, He that toucheth this man or his wife shall surely be put to . Then sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold: and him. And the man waxed great, and went forward, and grew until he became very great: For he had possession of flocks, and possession of herds, and great store of servants: and the envied him. For all the wells which his ’s servants had digged in the days of his , the had stopped them, and filled them with earth. And said unto , Go from us; for thou art much mightier than we. 17And departed thence, and pitched his tent in the valley of , and dwelt there. And digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of his ; for the had stopped them after the of : and he called their names after the names by which his had called them. And ’s servants digged in the valley, and found there a well of springing water. And the herdmen of did strive with ’s herdmen, saying, The water is ours: and he called the name of the well Esek; because they strove with him. And they digged another well, and strove for that also: and he called the name of it Sitnah. And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they strove not: and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said, For now hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land. And he went up from thence to Beer–sheba. And appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the of thy : fear not, for I am with thee, and will thee, and multiply thy for my servant ’s sake. And he builded an there, and called upon the name of , and pitched his tent there: and there ’s servants digged a well. Then went to him from , and Ahuzzath one of his friends, and Phichol the chief captain of his army. And said unto them, Wherefore come ye to me, seeing ye hate me, and have sent me away from you? And they said, We saw certainly that was with thee: and we said, Let there be now an betwixt us, even betwixt us and thee, and let us make a with thee; That thou wilt do us no hurt, as we have not touched thee, and as we have done unto thee nothing but good, and have sent thee away in peace: thou art now the of . And he made them a feast, and they did eat and drink. And they rose up betimes in the morning, and sware one to another: and sent them away, and they departed from him in peace. And it came to pass the same day, that ’s servants came, and told him concerning the well which they had digged, and said unto him, We have found water. And he called it Shebah: therefore the name of the city is Beer–sheba unto this day. And was forty years old when he took to wife the daughter of the , and Bashemath the daughter of the : Which were a grief of unto and to .
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