World English Bible · The patriarchs
Job 23
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
1Then answered, "Even today my complaint is rebellious. His hand is heavy in spite of my groaning. Oh that I knew where I might find him! That I might come even to his seat! I would set my cause in order before him, and fill my with arguments. I would know the words which he would answer me, and understand what he would tell me. Would he contend with me in the greatness of his ? No, but he would listen to me. There the upright might reason with him, so I should be from my judge. "If I go east, he is not there. If I go west, I can't find him. He works to the north, but I can't see him. He turns south, but I can't catch a glimpse of him. But he knows that I take. When he has tried me, I will come out like gold. My foot has held to his steps. I have kept his way, and not turned away. I haven't gone back from the of his . I have treasured up the words of his more than my necessary food. But he stands alone, and who can oppose him? What his , even that he does. For he performs that which is appointed for me. Many such things are with him. Therefore I am terrified at his . When I consider, I am afraid of him. For has made faint. has terrified me. Because I was not before , neither did he cover the thick from .
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.