World English Bible · The patriarchs
Job 41
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"Can you draw out Leviathan with a fish hook, or press down his with a cord? Can you put a rope into his nose, or pierce his jaw through with a hook? Will he make many petitions to you, or will he speak soft words to you? Will he make a with you, that you should take him for a servant ? Will you play with him as with a bird? Or will you bind him for your girls? Will traders barter for him? Will they part him among the merchants? 7Can you fill his skin with barbed irons, or his head with fish spears? Lay your hand on him. Remember the battle, and do so no more. Behold, the of him is in . Won't one be cast down even at the sight of him? None is so fierce that he dare stir him up. Who then is he who can stand before me? Who has first given to me, that I should repay him? Everything under is mine. "I will not keep silence concerning his limbs, nor his mighty strength, nor his goodly frame. Who can strip off his outer garment? Who will come within his jaws? Who can open the doors of ? Around his teeth is terror. Strong scales are his pride, shut up together with a close seal. 16One is so near to another, that no air can come between them. 17They are joined to one another. They stick together, so that they can't be pulled apart. His sneezing flashes out . His eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his go burning torches. Sparks of leap out. Out of his nostrils a smoke goes, as of a boiling pot over a of reeds. His breath kindles coals. A flame goes out of his . There is strength in his neck. Terror dances before him. 23The flakes of his are joined together. They are firm on him. They can't be moved. is as firm as a stone, yes, firm as the lower millstone. When he raises himself up, the mighty are afraid. They retreat before his thrashing. If one attacks him with , it can't prevail; nor the spear, the dart, nor the pointed shaft. 27He counts iron as straw, and bronze as rotten wood. The arrow can't make him flee. Sling stones are like to him. Clubs are counted as stubble. He laughs at the rushing of the javelin. His undersides are like sharp potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a sledge. 31He makes the deep to boil like a pot. He makes the sea like a pot of ointment. He makes a path shine after him. One would think the deep had white hair. On earth there is not his equal, that is made without fear. He sees everything that is high. He is king over all the sons of pride."
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.