World English Bible · The patriarchs
Job 30
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"But now those who are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I considered unworthy to put with my sheep dogs. 2Of what use is the strength of their hands to me, men in whom ripe age has ? They are gaunt from lack and . They gnaw the dry ground, in the gloom of waste and desolation. They pluck salt herbs by the bushes. The roots of the broom tree are their food. They are driven out from among men. They cry after them as after a thief, so that they live in frightful valleys, and in holes of the earth and of the rocks. They bray among the bushes. They are gathered together under the nettles. They are children of fools, yes, children of men. They were flogged out of the land. "Now I have become their song. Yes, I am to them. They abhor me, they stand aloof from me, and don't hesitate to spit in . For he has untied his cord, and afflicted me; and they have thrown off restraint before me. On my rise the rabble. They thrust aside my feet. They cast their ways of up against me. They mar my path. They promote my without anyone's help. As through a wide breach they come. They roll themselves in amid the . Terrors have turned on me. They chase my as the wind. My welfare has passed away as a cloud. "Now is poured out within me. Days of affliction have taken hold of me. In the night season my bones are pierced in me, and the pains that gnaw me take no rest. My garment is disfigured by great force. It binds me about as the collar of my tunic. He has cast me into the mire. I have become like . I cry to you, and you do not answer me. I stand up, and you gaze at me. You have turned to be cruel to me. With the might of your hand you persecute me. You lift me up to the wind, and drive me with it. You dissolve me in the storm. For I know that you will bring me to , to the house appointed for all living. "However doesn't one stretch out a hand in his fall? Or in his calamity therefore cry for help? Didn't I weep for him who was in trouble? Wasn't grieved for ? When I looked for good, then evil came. When I waited for , came. is troubled, and doesn't rest. Days of affliction have come on me. I go without the sun. I stand up in , and cry for help. I am a brother to jackals, and a companion to ostriches. My skin grows black and peels from me. My bones are burned with heat. Therefore my harp has turned to , and my pipe into the voice of those who weep.
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.