King James Version · The patriarchs
Genesis 30
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And when saw that she , envied her sister; and said unto , Give me children, or else I . And ’s was kindled against : and he said, Am I in ’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the ? And she said, Behold my maid , go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her. And she gave him her handmaid to wife: and went in unto her. 5And conceived, and a son. And said, hath judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath given me a son: therefore called she his name Dan. 7And ’s maid conceived again, and a second son. And said, With great wrestlings have I wrestled with my sister, and I have prevailed: and she called his name . When saw that she had left bearing, she took her maid, and gave her to wife. 10And ’s maid a son. And said, A troop cometh: and she called his name Gad. 12And ’s maid a second son. And said, Happy am I, for the daughters will call me : and she called his name Asher. And went in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them unto his mother . Then said to , Give me, I thee, of thy son’s mandrakes. And she said unto her, Is it a small matter that thou hast taken my husband? and wouldest thou take away my son’s mandrakes also? And said, Therefore he shall lie with thee to night for thy son’s mandrakes. 16And came out of the field in the evening, and went out to meet him, and said, Thou must come in unto me; for surely I have hired thee with my son’s mandrakes. And he lay with her that night. And hearkened unto , and she conceived, and the fifth son. And said, hath given me my hire, because I have given my maiden to my husband: and she called his name . 19And conceived again, and the sixth son. And said, hath endued me with a good dowry; now will my husband with me, because I have born him six sons: and she called his name . And afterwards she a daughter, and called her name . And remembered , and hearkened to her, and opened her . And she conceived, and a son; and said, hath taken away my : And she called his name ; and said, shall add to me another son. And it came to pass, when had born , that said unto , Send me away, that I may go unto mine own place, and to my country. Give me my wives and my children, for whom I have thee, and let me go: for thou knowest my which I have done thee. And said unto him, I thee, if I have found in thine eyes, tarry: for I have learned by experience that hath me for thy sake. And he said, Appoint me thy wages, and I will give it. And he said unto him, Thou knowest how I have thee, and how thy cattle was with me. For it was little which thou hadst before I came, and it is now increased unto a multitude; and hath thee since my coming: and now when shall I provide for mine own house also? And he said, What shall I give thee? And said, Thou shalt not give me any thing: if thou wilt do this thing for me, I will again feed and keep thy flock: I will pass through all thy flock to day, removing from thence all the speckled and spotted cattle, and all the brown cattle among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats: and of such shall be my hire. So shall my answer for me in time to come, when it shall come for my hire before thy : every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats, and brown among the sheep, that shall be counted stolen with me. And said, Behold, I would it might be according to thy word. And he removed that day the he goats that were ringstraked and spotted, and all the she goats that were speckled and spotted, and every one that had some white in it, and all the brown among the sheep, and gave them into the hand of his sons. 36And he set three days’ journey betwixt himself and : and fed the rest of ’s flocks. And took him of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the . 38And he set the which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived before the , and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted. 40And did separate the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the ringstraked, and all the brown in the ; and he put his own flocks by themselves, and put them not unto ’s cattle. 41And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger cattle did conceive, that laid the before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, that they might conceive among the . 42But when the cattle were feeble, he put them not in: so the feebler were ’s, and the stronger ’s. And the man increased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and maidservants, and menservants, and camels, and asses.
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