World English Bible · The patriarchs
Job 40
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Moreover answered , "Shall he who argues contend with ? He who argues with , let him answer it." 3Then answered , "Behold, I am of small account. What will I answer you? I lay my hand on my . I have spoken once, and I will not answer; Yes, twice, but I will proceed no further." Then answered out of the whirlwind: "Now brace yourself like a man. I will question you, and you will answer me. Will you even annul my ? Will you condemn me, that you may be ? Or do you have an arm like ? Can you thunder with a voice like him? "Now deck yourself with excellency and dignity. Array yourself with and majesty. Pour out the fury of your . Look at everyone who is proud, and bring him low. Look at everyone who is proud, and humble him. Crush in their place. Hide them in together. Bind their faces in the hidden place. Then I will also admit to you that your own can you. "See now behemoth, which I made as well as you. He eats grass as an ox. 16Look now, his strength is in his thighs. His force is in the muscles of his belly. He moves his tail like a cedar. The sinews of his thighs are knit together. His bones are like tubes of bronze. His limbs are like bars of iron. He is the chief of the ways of . He who made him gives him his . Surely the mountains produce food for him, where all the animals of the field play. He lies under the lotus trees, in the covert of the reed, and the marsh. The lotuses cover him with their shade. The willows of the brook surround him. Behold, if a river overflows, he doesn't tremble. He is confident, though swells even to his . Shall any take him when he is on the watch, or pierce through his nose with a snare?
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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.