World English Bible · The patriarchs
Job 18
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Then the Shuhite answered, "How long will you hunt for words? Consider, and afterwards we will speak. Why are we counted as animals, which have become in your sight? You who tear yourself in your , will the earth be forsaken for you? Or will be removed out of its place? "Yes, of will be put out. The spark of his won't shine. will be dark in his tent. His lamp above him will be put out. The steps of his strength will be shortened. His own will cast him down. For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he wanders into its mesh. A snare will take him by the heel. A trap will catch him. A noose is hidden for him in the ground, a trap for him on . Terrors will make him afraid on every side, and will chase him at his heels. His strength will be famished. Calamity will be ready at his side. The members of his body will be devoured. of will devour his members. He will be rooted out of the security of his tent. He will be brought to the king of terrors. There will in his tent that which is none of his. Sulfur will be scattered on his habitation. His roots will be dried up beneath. His branch will above. His memory will from the earth. He will have no name in the street. He will be driven from into , and chased out of the world. He will have neither son nor grandson among his people, nor any remaining where he lived. Those who come after will be astonished at his day, as those who went before were frightened. Surely such are the dwellings of the unrighteous. This is the place of him who doesn't know ."
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.