World English Bible · The patriarchs
Job 27
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again took up his , and said, "As lives, who has taken away my right, , who has made bitter (for the length of my life is still in me, and of is in my nostrils); surely my will not speak unrighteousness, neither will my utter deceit. Far be it from me that I should you. Until I I will not my integrity from me. I hold to my , and will not let it go. will not me so long as I live. "Let my enemy be as . Let him who rises up against me be as the unrighteous. For what is the of the godless, when he is , when takes away his life? Will hear his cry when trouble comes on him? Will he delight himself in , and call on at all times? I will teach you about the hand of . I will not conceal that which is with . Behold, all of you have seen it yourselves; why then have you become altogether ? "This is the of a man with , the heritage of oppressors, which they receive from . If his children are multiplied, it is for . His will not be satisfied with bread. of him will be buried in . His will make no . Though he heap up silver as , and prepare clothing as the ; he may prepare it, but the will put it on, and the innocent will divide the silver. He builds his house as the moth, as a booth which the watchman makes. He lies down rich, but he will not do so again. He opens his eyes, and he is not. Terrors overtake him like waters. A storm steals him away in the night. The east wind carries him away, and he departs. It sweeps him out of his place. For it hurls at him, and does not spare, as he flees away from his hand. Men will clap their hands at him, and will hiss him out of his place.
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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.