King James Version · The patriarchs
Genesis 35
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And said unto , Arise, go up to Beth–el, and there: and make there an unto , that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the of thy brother. Then said unto his household, and to all that were with him, the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments: And let us arise, and go up to Beth–el; and I will make there an unto , who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in which I went. And they gave unto all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and hid them under the oak which was by . And they journeyed: and the terror of was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of . So came to , which is in the land of , that is, Beth–el, he and all the people that were with him. And he built there an , and called the place El–beth–el: because there appeared unto him, when he fled from the of his brother. But ’s nurse , and she was buried beneath Beth–el under an oak: and the name of it was called Allon–bachuth. And appeared unto again, when he came out of Padan–aram, and him. And said unto him, Thy name is : thy name shall not be called any more , but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel. And said unto him, I am : be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins; And the land which I gave and , to thee I will give it, and to thy after thee will I give the land. And went up from him in the place where he talked with him. And set up a pillar in the place where he talked with him, even a pillar of stone: and he poured a drink thereon, and he poured oil thereon. And called the name of the place where spake with him, Beth–el. And they journeyed from Beth–el; and there was but a little way to come to : and travailed, and she had hard labour. And it came to pass, when she was in hard labour, that the midwife said unto her, Fear not; thou shalt have this son also. And it came to pass, as her was in departing, (for she ) that she called his name Ben–oni: but his called him . And , and was buried in to , which is Beth–lehem. And set a pillar upon her : that is of ’s unto this day. And Israel journeyed, and spread his tent beyond the tower of Edar. And it came to pass, when Israel dwelt in that land, that went and lay with his ’s : and Israel heard it. Now the sons of were twelve: The sons of ; , ’s , and , and , and Judah, and , and : The sons of ; , and : And the sons of , ’s handmaid; Dan, and : And the sons of , ’s handmaid; Gad, and Asher: these are the sons of , which were born to him in Padan–aram. And came unto his unto , unto the city of Arbah, which is , where and sojourned. And the days of were an hundred and fourscore years. And gave up the ghost, and , and was gathered unto his people, being old and full of days: and his sons and .
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