King James Version · The patriarchs
Job 15
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Then answered the Temanite, and said, Should a man utter knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind? Should he reason with unprofitable talk? or with speeches wherewith he can do no good? Yea, thou castest off fear, and restrainest before . For thy uttereth thine , and thou choosest of the crafty. Thine own condemneth thee, and not I: yea, thine own testify against thee. Art thou the first man that was born? or wast thou made before the hills? Hast thou heard the secret of ? and dost thou restrain to thyself? What knowest thou, that we know not? what understandest thou, which is not in us? With us are both the grayheaded and very aged men, much elder than thy . Are the consolations of small with thee? is there any secret thing with thee? Why doth thine carry thee away? and what do thy eyes wink at, That thou turnest thy against , and lettest such words go out of thy ? What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be ? Behold, he putteth no in his ; yea, are not clean in his sight. How much more and filthy is man, which drinketh like water? I will shew thee, hear me; and that which I have seen I will declare; Which men have told from their fathers, and have not hid it: Unto whom alone the earth was given, and no passed among them. man travaileth with pain all his days, and the number of years is hidden to the oppressor. A dreadful sound is in his ears: in prosperity shall come upon him. He believeth not that he shall return out of , and he is waited for of . He wandereth abroad for bread, saying, Where is it? he knoweth that the day of is ready at his hand. Trouble and anguish shall make him afraid; they shall prevail against him, as a king ready to the battle. For he stretcheth out his hand against , and strengtheneth himself against . He runneth upon him, even on his neck, upon the thick bosses of his bucklers: Because he covereth with his fatness, and maketh collops of fat on his flanks. And he dwelleth in desolate cities, and in houses which no man inhabiteth, which are ready to become heaps. He shall not be rich, neither shall his substance continue, neither shall he prolong the perfection thereof upon the earth. He shall not depart out of ; the flame shall dry up his , and by the breath of his shall he go away. Let not him that is deceived in : for shall be his recompence. It shall be accomplished before his time, and his branch shall not be green. He shall shake off his unripe grape as , and shall cast off his flower as the olive. For of shall be desolate, and shall consume the tabernacles of bribery. They conceive mischief, and bring forth , and their belly prepareth deceit.
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.