World English Bible · The patriarchs
Job 28
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"Surely there is a mine for silver, and a place for gold which they refine. Iron is taken out of the earth, and copper is smelted out of the ore. Man sets an end to , and searches out, to the furthest bound, the stones of obscurity and of thick . 4He breaks open a shaft away from where people live. They are forgotten by the foot. They hang far from men, they swing back and forth. As for the earth, out of it comes bread. Underneath it is turned up as it were by . Sapphires come from its rocks. It has of gold. That path no bird of prey knows, neither has the falcon's eye seen it. 8The proud animals have not trodden it, nor has the fierce lion passed by there. He puts his hand on the flinty , and he overturns the mountains by the roots. He cuts out channels among the rocks. His eye sees every precious thing. He binds the streams that they don't trickle. The thing that is hidden he brings out to . "But where will be found? Where is the place of understanding? Man doesn't know its price, and it isn't found in the land of the living. The deep says, 'It isn't in me.' The sea says, 'It isn't with me.' It can't be gotten for gold, neither will silver be weighed for its price. It can't be valued with the gold of , with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. Gold and glass can't equal it, neither will it be exchanged for jewels of fine gold. No mention will be made of coral or of crystal. Yes, the price of is above rubies. The topaz of will not equal it. It won't be valued with pure gold. Where then does come from? Where is the place of understanding? Seeing it is hidden from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the birds of . and say, 'We have heard a rumor of it with our ears.' " understands its way, and he knows its place. For he looks to the ends of the earth, and sees under the whole sky. He establishes the force of the wind. Yes, he measures out the waters by measure. When he made a for the , and a way for the lightning of the thunder, then he saw it, and declared it. He established it, yes, and searched it out. To man he said, 'Behold, the , that is . To depart from evil is understanding.'"
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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.