King James Version · The patriarchs
Job 22
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1Then the Temanite answered and said, Can a man be profitable unto , as he that is may be profitable unto himself? Is it any pleasure to , that thou art ? or is it gain to him, that thou makest thy ways perfect? Will he reprove thee for fear of thee? will he enter with thee into ? Is not thy wickedness great? and thine infinite? For thou hast taken a pledge from thy brother for nought, and stripped the of their clothing. Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink, and thou hast withholden bread from the hungry. But as for the mighty man, he had the earth; and the honourable man dwelt in it. Thou hast sent away empty, and the arms of have been broken. Therefore snares are round about thee, and sudden fear troubleth thee; Or , that thou canst not see; and abundance of waters cover thee. Is not in the height of ? and behold the height of the stars, how high they are! And thou sayest, How doth know? can he judge through the dark cloud? Thick clouds are a covering to him, that he seeth not; and he walketh in the circuit of . Hast thou marked the old way which men have trodden? Which were cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown with a flood: Which said unto , Depart from us: and what can do for them? Yet he filled their houses with good things: but the of is far from me. see it, and are glad: and the innocent laugh them to scorn. Whereas our substance is not cut down, but of them the consumeth. Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace: thereby good shall come unto thee. Receive, I thee, from his , and lay up his words in thine . If thou return to , thou shalt be built up, thou shalt far from thy tabernacles. Then shalt thou lay up gold as , and the gold of as the stones of the brooks. Yea, shall be thy defence, and thou shalt have plenty of silver. For then shalt thou have thy delight in , and shalt lift up thy unto . Thou shalt make thy unto him, and he shall hear thee, and thou shalt pay thy . Thou shalt also a thing, and it shall be established unto thee: and shall shine upon thy ways. When men are cast down, then thou shalt say, There is lifting up; and he shall the humble person. He shall the island of the innocent: and it is by the pureness of thine hands.
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.