World English Bible · The patriarchs
Job 39
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"Do you know the time when the mountain goats give birth? Do you watch when the doe bears fawns? Can you count the months that they fulfill? Or do you know the time when they give birth? 3They bow themselves. They bear their young. They end their labor pains. 4Their young ones become strong. They grow up in the open field. They go out, and don't return again. "Who has set the wild donkey free? Or who has loosened the bonds of the swift donkey, whose home I have made , and the salt land his ? He scorns the tumult of the city, neither does he hear the shouting of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture. He searches after every green thing. "Will the wild ox be content to you? Or will he stay by your feeding trough? Can you hold the wild ox in the furrow with his harness? Or will he till the valleys after you? Will you him, because his strength is great? Or will you leave to him your labor? Will you confide in him, that he will bring home , and gather the grain of your ? "The of the ostrich wave proudly, but are they the feathers and plumage of love? 14For she leaves her eggs on the earth, warms them in , 15and forgets that the foot may crush them, or that the wild animal may trample them. She deals harshly with her young ones, as if they were not hers. Though her labor is in , she is without fear, because has deprived her of , neither has he imparted to her understanding. When she lifts up herself on high, she scorns the horse and his rider. "Have you given the horse might? Have you clothed his neck with a quivering mane? Have you made him to leap as a ? The of his snorting is awesome. He paws in the valley, and rejoices in his strength. He goes out to meet the armed men. He mocks at fear, and is not dismayed, neither does he from . The quiver rattles against him, the flashing spear and the javelin. He eats up the ground with fierceness and rage, neither does he stand still at the sound of the . As often as the sounds he snorts, 'Aha!' He smells the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting. "Is it by your that the hawk soars, and stretches her toward the south? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up, and makes his nest on high? On the cliff he dwells and makes his home, on the point of the cliff and the . From there he spies out the prey. His eyes see it afar off. His young ones also suck up . Where the slain are, there he is."
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.