King James Version · The patriarchs
Genesis 48
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And it came to pass after these things, that one told , Behold, thy is sick: and he took with him his two sons, and . And one told , and said, Behold, thy son cometh unto thee: and Israel strengthened himself, and sat upon the bed. And said unto , appeared unto me at in the land of , and me, And said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a multitude of people; and will give this land to thy after thee for an possession. And now thy two sons, and , which were born unto thee in the land of before I came unto thee into , are mine; as and , they shall be mine. And thy issue, which thou begettest after them, shall be thine, and shall be called after the name of their brethren in their . And as for me, when I came from Padan, by me in the land of in , when yet there was but a little way to come unto : and I buried her there in of ; the same is Beth–lehem. 8And Israel beheld ’s sons, and said, Who are these? And said unto his , They are my sons, whom hath given me in this place. And he said, Bring them, I thee, unto me, and them. Now the eyes of Israel were dim for age, so that he could not see. And he brought them near unto him; and he kissed them, and embraced them. And Israel said unto , I had not thought to see thy : and, lo, hath shewed me also thy . And brought them out from between his knees, and he bowed himself with to the earth. 13And took them both, in his toward Israel’s left hand, and in his left hand toward Israel’s , and brought them near unto him. And Israel stretched out his , and laid it upon ’s head, who was the younger, and his left hand upon ’s head, guiding his hands wittingly; for was . And he , and said, , before whom my fathers and did walk, the which fed me all my life long unto this day, which me from all evil, the lads; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers and ; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth. And when saw that his laid his upon the head of , it displeased him: and he held up his ’s hand, to remove it from ’s head unto ’s head. And said unto his , Not so, : for this is ; put thy upon his head. And his refused, and said, I know it, my son, I know it: he also shall become a people, and he also shall be great: but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and shall become a multitude of nations. And he them that day, saying, In thee shall Israel , saying, make thee as and as : and he set before . And Israel said unto , Behold, I : but shall be with you, and bring you again unto the land of your fathers. Moreover I have given to thee one above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the with my and with my bow.
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