King James Version · The patriarchs
Job 5
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Call now, if there be any that will answer thee; and to which of wilt thou turn? For killeth the foolish man, and envy slayeth the silly one. I have seen the foolish taking root: but suddenly I his habitation. His children are far from safety, and they are crushed in the , neither is there any to them. Whose harvest the hungry eateth up, and taketh it even out of the , and the robber swalloweth up their substance. Although affliction cometh not forth of , neither doth trouble spring out of the ground; Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward. I would seek unto , and unto would I commit my cause: Which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvellous things without number: Who giveth upon the earth, and sendeth waters upon the fields: To set up on high those that be low; that those which mourn may be exalted to safety. He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise. He taketh in their own craftiness: and the of the froward is carried headlong. They meet with in the daytime, and grope in the noonday as in the night. But he saveth from , from their , and from the hand of the mighty. So hath , and stoppeth her . Behold, happy is the man whom correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of : For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole. He shall thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. In he shall thee from : and in war from the of . Thou shalt be hid from the scourge of : neither shalt thou be afraid of when it cometh. At and thou shalt laugh: neither shalt thou be afraid of the of the earth. For thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field: and the of the field shall be at peace with thee. And thou shalt know that thy shall be in peace; and thou shalt visit thy habitation, and shalt not . Thou shalt know also that thy shall be great, and thine as the grass of the earth. Thou shalt come to thy in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season. Lo this, we have searched it, so it is; hear it, and know thou it for thy good.
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.