King James Version · The patriarchs
Genesis 34
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And the daughter of , which she unto , went out to see the daughters of the land. And when the , prince of the country, saw her, he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her. And his clave unto the daughter of , and he loved the damsel, and spake kindly unto the damsel. And spake unto his , saying, Get me this damsel to wife. And heard that he had defiled his daughter: now his sons were with his cattle in the field: and held his peace until they were come. 6And of went out unto to commune with him. And the sons of came out of the field when they heard it: and the men were grieved, and they were very wroth, because he had wrought folly in Israel in lying with ’s daughter; which thing ought not to be done. And communed with them, saying, The of my son longeth for your daughter: I you give her him to wife. And make ye marriages with us, and give your daughters unto us, and take our daughters unto you. And ye shall with us: and the land shall be before you; and trade ye therein, and get you possessions therein. And said unto her and unto her brethren, Let me find in your eyes, and what ye shall say unto me I will give. Ask me never so much dowry and gift, and I will give according as ye shall say unto me: but give me the damsel to wife. And the sons of answered and his deceitfully, and said, because he had defiled their sister: And they said unto them, We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to one that is ; for that were a unto us: But in this will we consent unto you: If ye will be as we be, that every male of you be ; 16Then will we give our daughters unto you, and we will take your daughters to us, and we will with you, and we will become one people. 17But if ye will not unto us, to be ; then will we take our daughter, and we will be gone. 18And their words pleased , and ’s son. And the young man deferred not to do the thing, because he had delight in ’s daughter: and he was more honourable than all the house of his . And and his son came unto the of their city, and communed with the men of their city, saying, 21These men are peaceable with us; therefore let them in the land, and trade therein; for the land, behold, it is large enough for them; let us take their daughters to us for wives, and let us give them our daughters. 22Only herein will the men consent unto us for to with us, to be one people, if every male among us be , as they are . Shall not their cattle and their substance and every beast of theirs be ours? only let us consent unto them, and they will with us. And unto and unto his son hearkened all that went out of the of his city; and every male was , all that went out of the of his city. And it came to pass on the third day, when they were sore, that two of the sons of , and , ’s brethren, took each man his , and came upon the city boldly, and slew all the males. And they slew and his son with the edge of , and took out of ’s house, and went out. The sons of came upon the slain, and spoiled the city, because they had defiled their sister. They took their sheep, and their oxen, and their asses, and that which was in the city, and that which was in the field, 29And all their wealth, and all their little ones, and their wives took they , and spoiled even all that was in the house. And said to and , Ye have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land, among and the : and I being few in number, they shall gather themselves together against me, and me; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house. And they said, Should he deal with our sister as with an ?
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