World English Bible · The patriarchs
Job 13
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"Behold, my eye has seen all this. My ear has heard and understood it. What you know, I know also. I am not inferior to you. "Surely I would speak to . I to reason with . But you are forgers of lies. You are all physicians of no value. Oh that you would be completely silent! Then you would be . Hear now my reasoning. Listen to the pleadings of my . Will you speak unrighteously for , and talk deceitfully for him? Will you show partiality to him? Will you contend for ? Is it good that he should search you out? Or as one deceives a man, will you deceive him? He will surely reprove you if you secretly show partiality. Won't his majesty make you afraid and his dread fall on you? Your memorable sayings are of . Your defenses are defenses of . "Be silent! Leave me alone, that I may speak. Let come on me what will. Why should I take my in my teeth, and put my life in my hand? Behold, he will kill me. I have no . Nevertheless, I will maintain my ways before him. This also will be my , that a godless man will not come before him. Listen carefully to my speech. Let my declaration be in your ears. See now, I have set my cause in order. I know that I am . Who is he who will contend with me? For then I would hold my peace and give up . "Only don't do two things to me, then I will not hide myself from your : withdraw your hand far from me, and don't let your terror make me afraid. Then call, and I will answer, or let me speak, and you answer me. How many are my and ? Make me know my and my . Why do you hide your , and consider me your enemy? Will you harass a driven leaf? Will you pursue the dry stubble? For you write bitter things against me, and make me the of my youth. You also put my feet in the stocks, and mark all my . You set a bound to the soles of my feet, though I am decaying like a rotten thing, like a garment that is moth-eaten.
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. 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.