King James Version · The patriarchs
Job 40
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Moreover answered , and said, Shall he that contendeth with instruct him? he that reproveth , let him answer it. 3Then answered , and said, Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my . Once have I spoken; but I will not answer: yea, twice; but I will proceed no further. Then answered unto out of the whirlwind, and said, Gird up thy loins now like a man: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. Wilt thou also disannul my ? wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be ? Hast thou an arm like ? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him? Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with and beauty. Cast abroad the rage of thy : and behold every one that is proud, and abase him. Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down in their place. Hide them in together; and bind their faces in secret. Then will I also unto thee that thine own can thee. Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox. 16Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together. His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron. He is the chief of the ways of : he that made him can make his to approach unto him. Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the of the field play. He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens. The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about. Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his . He taketh it with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. 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.