King James Version · The patriarchs
Job 24
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Why, seeing times are not hidden from , do they that know him not see his days? Some remove the landmarks; they violently take away flocks, and feed thereof. They drive away the ass of , they take the ’s ox for a pledge. They turn out of : of the earth hide themselves together. Behold, as wild asses in , go they forth to their work; rising betimes for a prey: yieldeth food for them and for their children. They reap every one his corn in the field: and they gather the vintage of . They cause the to lodge without clothing, that they have no covering in the cold. They are wet with the of the mountains, and embrace for want of a shelter. They pluck from the breast, and take a pledge of . They cause him to go without clothing, and they take away the sheaf from the hungry; Which make oil within their walls, and tread their winepresses, and suffer thirst. Men groan from out of the city, and the of the wounded crieth out: yet layeth not folly to them. They are of those that rebel against ; they know not the ways thereof, nor in the thereof. The rising with killeth and needy, and in the night is as a thief. The eye also of the waiteth for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me: and disguiseth . In the dark they dig through houses, which they had marked for themselves in the daytime: they know not . For the morning is to them even as the shadow of : if one know them, they are in the terrors of the shadow of . He is swift as the waters; their is in the earth: he beholdeth not of the vineyards. and heat consume the snow waters: so doth the those which have . The shall forget him; the worm shall feed sweetly on him; he shall be no more remembered; and wickedness shall be broken as a tree. He evil entreateth the that beareth not: and doeth not good to the . He draweth also the mighty with his : he riseth up, and no man is sure of life. Though it be given him to be in safety, whereon he resteth; yet his eyes are upon their ways. They are exalted for a little while, but are gone and brought low; they are taken out of as all other, and as the tops of the ears of corn. And if it be not so now, who will make me a liar, and make my speech nothing worth?
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.