World English Bible · The patriarchs
Job 5
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"Call now; is there any who will answer you? To which of the will you turn? For resentment kills the foolish man, and kills the simple. I have seen the foolish taking root, but suddenly I his habitation. His children are far from safety. They are crushed in the . Neither is there any to them, whose harvest the hungry eat up, and take it even out of the . The snare gapes for their substance. For affliction doesn't come out of , neither does trouble spring out of the ground; but man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward. "But as for me, I would seek . I would commit my cause to , who does great things that can't be fathomed, marvelous things without number; who gives on the earth, and sends waters on the fields; so that he sets up on high those who are low, those who mourn are exalted to safety. He frustrates the plans of the crafty, so that their hands can't perform their enterprise. He takes in their own craftiness; the of the cunning is carried headlong. They meet with in the day time, and grope at noonday as in the night. But he saves from of their , even from the hand of the mighty. So has , and injustice shuts her . "Behold, happy is the man whom corrects. Therefore do not despise the chastening of . For he wounds and binds up. He injures and his hands make whole. He will you in six troubles; yes, in seven no evil will touch you. In he will you from ; in war, from the of . You will be hidden from the scourge of , neither will you be afraid of when it comes. You will laugh at and , neither will you be afraid of the animals of the earth. For you will be allied with the stones of the field. The animals of the field will be at peace with you. You will know that your tent is in peace. You will visit your fold, and will miss nothing. You will know also that will be great, as the grass of the earth. You will come to your in a full age, like a shock of grain comes . Behold, we have researched it. It is so. Hear it, and know it for your good."
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.