King James Version · The patriarchs
Job 27
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Moreover continued his , and said, As liveth, who hath taken away my ; and , who hath vexed ; All the while my breath is in me, and of is in my nostrils; My shall not speak wickedness, nor my utter deceit. forbid that I should you: till I I will not remove mine integrity from me. My I hold , and will not let it go: shall not me so long as I live. Let mine enemy be as , and he that riseth up against me as the unrighteous. For what is the of the , though he hath gained, when taketh away his ? Will hear his cry when trouble cometh upon him? Will he delight himself in ? will he always call upon ? I will teach you by the hand of : that which is with will I not conceal. Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it; why then are ye thus altogether ? This is the of a man with , and the heritage of oppressors, which they shall receive of . If his children be multiplied, it is for : and his shall not be satisfied with bread. Those that of him shall be buried in : and his shall not weep. Though he heap up silver as , and prepare raiment as the ; He may prepare it, but the shall put it on, and the innocent shall divide the silver. He buildeth his house as a moth, and as a booth that the keeper maketh. The rich man shall lie down, but he shall not be gathered: he openeth his eyes, and he is not. Terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealeth him away in the night. The east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth: and as a storm hurleth him out of his place. For shall cast upon him, and not spare: he would fain flee out of his hand. Men shall clap their hands at him, and shall hiss him out of his place.
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.