King James Version · The patriarchs
Job 11
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Then answered the Naamathite, and said, Should not of words be answered? and should a man full of talk be ? Should thy lies make men hold their peace? and when thou mockest, shall no man make thee ? For thou hast said, My doctrine is pure, and I am clean in thine eyes. But oh that would speak, and open his against thee; And that he would shew thee the secrets of , that they are double to that which is! Know therefore that exacteth of thee less than thine deserveth. Canst thou by searching find out ? canst thou find out unto perfection? It is as high as ; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea. If he , and shut up, or gather together, then who can hinder him? For he knoweth men: he seeth wickedness also; will he not then consider it? For man would be , though man be born like a wild ass’s colt. If thou prepare thine , and stretch out thine hands toward him; If be in thine hand, put it far away, and let not wickedness in thy tabernacles. For then shalt thou lift up thy without spot; yea, thou shalt be stedfast, and shalt not fear: Because thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it as waters that pass away: And thine age shall be clearer than the noonday; thou shalt shine forth, thou shalt be as the morning. And thou shalt be secure, because there is ; yea, thou shalt dig about thee, and thou shalt take thy rest in safety. Also thou shalt lie down, and none shall make thee afraid; yea, many shall make suit unto thee. But the eyes of shall fail, and they shall not escape, and their shall be as the giving up of the ghost.
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.