World English Bible · The patriarchs
Job 7
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"Isn't a man forced to labor on earth? Aren't his days like the days of a hired hand? As a servant who earnestly the shadow, as a hireling who looks for his wages, so I am made to possess months of misery, wearisome nights are appointed to me. When I lie down, I say, 'When will I arise, and the night be gone?' I toss and turn until the dawning of the day. My is clothed with worms and clods of . My skin closes up, and breaks out afresh. My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent without . Oh remember that my life is a breath. My eye will no more see good. The eye of him who sees me will see me no more. Your eyes will be on me, but I will not be. As the cloud is consumed and vanishes away, so he who goes down to will come up no more. He will return no more to his house, neither will his place know him any more. "Therefore I will not keep silent. I will speak in the anguish of . I will complain in the bitterness of . Am I a sea, or a sea monster, that you put a guard over me? When I say, 'My bed will comfort me. My couch will ease my complaint,' then you scare me with and terrify me through , so that chooses strangling, rather than my bones. I loathe my life. I don't want to live . Leave me alone, for my days are but a breath. What is man, that you should magnify him, that you should set on him, that you should visit him every morning, and him every moment? How long will you not look away from me, nor leave me alone until I swallow down my spittle? If I have , what do I do to you, you of men? Why have you set me as a mark for you, so that I am a burden to myself? Why do you not pardon my , and take away my ? For now will I lie down in . You will seek me diligently, but I will not be."
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.