King James Version · The patriarchs
Genesis 45
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Then could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him; and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while made himself known unto his brethren. And he wept aloud: and the and the house of heard. And said unto his brethren, I am ; doth yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his . And said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I you. And they came near. And he said, I am your brother, whom ye sold into . Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for did send me before you to preserve life. For these two years hath the been in the land: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest. And sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to your lives by a great . So now it was not you that sent me hither, but : and he hath made me a to , and of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of . Haste ye, and go up to , and say unto him, Thus saith thy son , hath made me of all : come down unto me, tarry not: And thou shalt in the land of , and thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy children’s children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that thou hast: And there will I nourish thee; for yet there are five years of ; lest thou, and thy household, and all that thou hast, come to . And, behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother , that it is my that speaketh unto you. And ye shall tell of all my in , and of all that ye have seen; and ye shall haste and bring down hither. And he fell upon his brother ’s neck, and wept; and wept upon his neck. Moreover he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them: and after that his brethren talked with him. And the fame thereof was heard in ’s house, saying, ’s brethren are come: and it pleased well, and his servants. And said unto , Say unto thy brethren, This do ye; lade your , and go, get you unto the land of ; And take your and your households, and come unto me: and I will give you the good of the land of , and ye shall eat the land. Now thou art commanded, this do ye; take you wagons out of the land of for your little ones, and for your wives, and bring your , and come. Also regard not your stuff; for the good of all the land of is yours. And the did so: and gave them wagons, according to the of , and gave them provision for . To all of them he gave each man changes of raiment; but to he gave three hundred pieces of silver, and five changes of raiment. And to his he sent after this manner; ten asses laden with the good things of , and ten she asses laden with corn and bread and meat for his by . So he sent his brethren away, and they departed: and he said unto them, See that ye fall not out by . 25And they went up out of , and came into the land of unto their , And told him, saying, is yet alive, and he is governor over all the land of . And ’s fainted, for he them not. And they told him all the words of , which he had said unto them: and when he saw the wagons which had sent to carry him, of their revived: And Israel said, It is enough; my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I .
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