King James Version · The patriarchs
Job 20
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Then answered the Naamathite, and said, Therefore do my cause me to answer, and for this I make haste. I have heard the check of my , and of my understanding causeth me to answer. Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon earth, That the triumphing of is short, and the joy of the but for a moment? Though his excellency mount up to , and his head reach unto the clouds; Yet he shall for ever like his own dung: they which have seen him shall say, Where is he? He shall fly away as a , and shall not be found: yea, he shall be chased away as a of the night. The eye also which saw him shall see him no more; neither shall his place any more behold him. His children shall seek to please , and his hands shall restore their goods. His bones are full of the of his youth, which shall lie down with him in . Though wickedness be sweet in his , though he hide it under his ; Though he spare it, and forsake it not; but keep it still within his : Yet his meat in his bowels is turned, it is the gall of asps within him. He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again: shall cast them out of his belly. He shall suck the poison of asps: the viper’s shall him. He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter. That which he laboured for shall he restore, and shall not swallow it down: according to his substance shall the be, and he shall not rejoice therein. Because he hath oppressed and hath forsaken ; because he hath violently taken away an house which he builded not; Surely he shall not feel quietness in his belly, he shall not of that which he . There shall none of his meat be left; therefore shall no man look for his goods. In the fulness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits: every hand of shall come upon him. When he is about to fill his belly, shall cast the fury of his upon him, and shall it upon him while he is eating. He shall flee from the iron weapon, and the bow of steel shall strike him through. It is drawn, and cometh out of the body; yea, the glittering cometh out of his gall: terrors are upon him. All shall be hid in his secret places: a not blown shall consume him; it shall go ill with him that is left in his . The shall his ; and the earth shall rise up against him. The increase of his house shall depart, and his goods shall flow away in the day of his . This is the of a man from , and the heritage appointed unto him by .
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.