World English Bible · The patriarchs
Job 21
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1Then answered, "Listen diligently to my speech. Let this be your consolation. Allow me, and I also will speak. After I have spoken, mock on. As for me, is my complaint to man? Why shouldn't I be impatient? Look at me, and be astonished. Lay your hand on your . When I remember, I am troubled. Horror takes hold of my . "Why do live, become old, yes, and grow mighty in ? Their child is established with them in their sight, their before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the of upon them. Their bulls breed without fail. Their cows calve, and don't miscarry. They send out their little ones like a flock. Their children dance. They sing to the tambourine and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the pipe. They spend their days in prosperity. In an instant they go down to . They tell , 'Depart from us, for we don't want to know about your ways. What is , that we should him? What profit should we have, if we to him?' Behold, their prosperity is not in their hand. The of is far from me. "How often is it that the lamp of is put out, that their calamity comes on them, that distributes sorrows in his ? How often is it that they are as stubble before the wind, as that the storm carries away? You say, ' lays up his for his children.' Let him it to himself, that he may know it. Let his own eyes see his . Let him drink of the of . For what does he care for his house after him, when the number of his months is ? "Shall any teach knowledge, since he judges those who are high? One dies in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet. His pails are full of milk. The marrow of his bones is moistened. Another dies in bitterness of , and never tastes of good. They lie down alike in . The worm covers them. "Behold, I know your , the plans with which you would wrong me. For you say, 'Where is the house of the prince? Where is the tent in which lived?' Haven't you asked wayfaring men? Don't you know their evidences, that the evil man is reserved to the day of calamity, that they are led out to the ? Who will declare his way to ? Who will repay him what he has done? Yet he will be borne to the . Men will keep watch over the . The clods of the valley will be sweet to him. All men will draw after him, as there were innumerable before him. So how can you comfort me with nonsense, because in your answers there only falsehood?"
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.