World English Bible · The patriarchs
Job 4
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Then the Temanite answered, "If someone ventures to talk with you, will you be grieved? But who can withhold himself from speaking? Behold, you have instructed many, you have strengthened the weak hands. Your words have supported him who was falling, you have made the feeble knees firm. But now it has come to you, and you faint. It touches you, and you are troubled. Isn't your piety your confidence? Isn't the integrity of your ways your ? "Remember, now, who ever , being innocent? Or where were the upright ? According to what I have seen, those who plow and sow trouble, reap the same. By the breath of they . By the blast of his are they consumed. The roaring of the lion, and the voice of the fierce lion, the teeth of the young lions, are broken. The old lion perishes for lack of prey. The cubs of the lioness are scattered abroad. "Now a thing was secretly brought to me. My ear received a whisper of it. In from the of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, fear came on me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake. Then a passed before . The hair of my stood up. It stood still, but I couldn't discern its appearance. A form was before my eyes. Silence, then I heard a voice, saying, 'Shall mortal man be more than ? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker? Behold, he puts no in his servants. He charges his with error. How much more those who in houses of , whose foundation is in , who are crushed before the moth! Between morning and evening they are destroyed. They without any regarding it. Isn't their tent cord plucked up within them? They , and that without .'
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.