World English Bible · The patriarchs
Job 16
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1Then answered, "I have heard many such things. You are all miserable comforters! Shall words have an end? Or what provokes you that you answer? I also could speak as you do. If your were in place, I could join words together against you, and shake my head at you, but I would strengthen you with my . The solace of my would relieve you. "Though I speak, my grief is not subsided. Though I forbear, what am I eased? But now, , you have surely worn me out. You have made all my company desolate. You have shriveled me up. This is a against me. My leanness rises up against me. It testifies to . He has torn me in his and persecuted me. He has gnashed on me with his teeth. My adversary sharpens his eyes on me. They have gaped on me with their . They have struck me on the cheek reproachfully. They gather themselves together against me. delivers me to the ungodly, and casts me into the hands of . I was at ease, and he broke me apart. Yes, he has taken me by the neck, and dashed me to pieces. He has also set me up for his target. His archers surround me. He splits my kidneys apart, and does not spare. He pours out my bile on the ground. He breaks me with breach on breach. He runs at me like a giant. I have sewed on my skin, and have thrust my in . is red with weeping. Deep is on my eyelids, although there is no in my hands, and my is pure. "Earth, don't cover my . Let my cry have no place to rest. Even now, behold, my is in . He who vouches for me is on high. My friends scoff at me. My eyes pour out tears to , that he would maintain the right of a man with , of a with his neighbor! For when years have come, I will go of no return.
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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.