King James Version · The patriarchs
Genesis 33
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And lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, came, and with him four hundred men. And he divided the children unto , and unto , and unto the two handmaids. And he put the handmaids and their children foremost, and and her children after, and and hindermost. And he passed over before them, and bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother. And ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him: and they wept. And he lifted up his eyes, and saw the women and the children; and said, Who are those with thee? And he said, The children which hath graciously given thy servant. 6Then the handmaidens came near, they and their children, and they bowed themselves. 7And also with her children came near, and bowed themselves: and after came near and , and they bowed themselves. And he said, What meanest thou by all this drove which I met? And he said, These are to find in the sight of my . And said, I have enough, my brother; keep that thou hast unto thyself. And said, Nay, I thee, if now I have found in thy sight, then receive my present at my hand: for therefore I have seen thy , as though I had seen the of , and thou wast pleased with me. Take, I thee, my that is brought to thee; because hath dealt graciously with me, and because I have enough. And he urged him, and he took it. 12And he said, Let us take our journey, and let us go, and I will go before thee. And he said unto him, My knoweth that the children are tender, and the flocks and herds with young are with me: and if men should overdrive them one day, all the flock will . Let my , I thee, pass over before his servant: and I will lead on softly, according as the cattle that goeth before me and the children be able to , until I come unto my unto . And said, Let me now leave with thee some of the folk that are with me. And he said, What needeth it? let me find in the sight of my . 16So returned that day on his way unto . And journeyed to , and built him an house, and made for his cattle: therefore the name of the place is called . And came to Shalem, a city of , which is in the land of , when he came from Padan–aram; and pitched his tent before the city. And he bought a parcel of a field, where he had spread his tent, at the hand of the children of , ’s , for an hundred pieces of money. And he erected there an , and called it El–elohe–Israel.
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