King James Version · Before the nations
Genesis 4
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And knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and , and said, I have gotten a man from . And she again his brother . And was a keeper of sheep, but was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass, that brought of the fruit of the ground an unto . And , he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of thereof. And had respect unto and to his : But unto and to his he had not respect. And was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And said unto , Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his , and thou shalt him. And talked with his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that rose up against his brother, and slew him. And said unto , Where is thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou from the earth, which hath opened her to receive thy brother’s from thy hand; When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. And said unto , My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the of the earth; and from thy shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall me. And said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth , shall be taken on him sevenfold. And set a mark upon , lest any finding him should kill him. And went out from the of , and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of . And knew his wife; and she conceived, and : and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, . And unto was born : and begat : and begat Methusael: and Methusael begat . And took unto him two wives: the name of the one was , and the name of the other . And : he was of such as in tents, and of such as have cattle. And his brother’s name was : he was of all such as handle the harp and organ. And , she also , an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron: and the sister of was . And said unto his wives, and , ; ye wives of , unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt. If shall be sevenfold, truly seventy and sevenfold. And knew his wife again; and she a son, and called his name : For , said she, hath appointed me another instead of , whom slew. And to , to him also there was born a son; and he called his name : then began men to call upon the name of .
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 · Before the nations, 2600 BC to 2100 BC ›
The opening chapters, from creation to Babel, told on a scale that covers the whole earth before the story narrows to one family.
- The neighbours' own stories
- Mesopotamia told its own versions of these events. Atrahasis and the eleventh tablet of Gilgamesh tell of a flood, a survivor, an ark, and birds sent out to find land. Enuma Elish tells of a world made from a defeated sea. The resemblances are close enough that scholars have argued about them for a century and a half, and the differences are where the argument gets interesting: Genesis has no quarrel among gods, no accidental humanity, and a flood sent for moral reasons rather than because people were noisy.
- Babel and the ziggurat
- A tower with its top in the heavens, built of brick and bitumen on a plain in Shinar, describes a Mesopotamian ziggurat exactly. Dozens were built, the best known at Ur and Babylon, of mud brick because southern Mesopotamia has no stone. The detail about brick instead of stone is the kind of thing someone writes who has actually seen one.
- The wider world
- If these chapters are placed anywhere in ordinary chronology, the surrounding centuries are the age of the Egyptian pyramids, the Sumerian city-states, the Indus Valley cities, and the first phase of Stonehenge. Writing was a few centuries old and existed in two places on earth.
All of Genesis