King James Version · The patriarchs
Job 14
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not. And dost thou open thine eyes upon such an one, and bringest me into with thee? Who can bring a clean thing out of an ? not one. Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass; Turn from him, that he may rest, till he shall accomplish, as an hireling, his day. For there is of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof in the ground; Yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up: So man lieth down, and riseth not: till be no more, they shall not awake, nor be out of their sleep. O that thou wouldest hide me in the , that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a , and remember me! If a man , shall he live again? all the days of my will I wait, till my change come. Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee: thou wilt have a to the work of thine hands. For now thou numberest my steps: dost thou not watch over my ? My is sealed up in a bag, and thou sewest up mine . And surely the mountain falling cometh to nought, and is removed out of his place. The waters wear the stones: thou washest away the things which grow out of of the earth; and thou destroyest the of man. Thou prevailest for ever against him, and he passeth: thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away. His sons come to , and he knoweth it not; and they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them. But his upon him shall have pain, and his within him shall mourn.
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.