World English Bible · The patriarchs
Job 8
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Then the Shuhite answered, "How long will you speak these things? Shall the words of your be a mighty wind? Does pervert justice? Or does pervert ? If your children have against him, he has them into the hand of their . If you want to seek diligently, make your to . If you were pure and upright, surely now he would awaken for you, and make the habitation of your prosperous. Though your beginning was small, yet your latter end would greatly increase. "Please inquire of past generations. Find out about the learning of their fathers. (For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days on earth are a shadow.) Shall they not teach you, tell you, and utter words out of their ? "Can the papyrus grow up without mire? Can the rushes grow without water? While it is yet in its greenness, not cut down, it withers before any other reed. So are the of all who forget . The of the godless man will , whose confidence will break apart, whose is a spider's web. He will lean on his house, but it will not stand. He will cling to it, but it will not . He is green before the sun. His shoots go out along his garden. His roots are wrapped around pile. He sees the place of stones. If he is destroyed from his place, then it will deny him, saying, 'I have not seen you.' Behold, this is the joy of his way. Out of the earth, others will spring. "Behold, will not cast away a blameless man, neither will he uphold the . He will still fill your with laughter, your with shouting. Those who hate you will be clothed with . The tent of will be no more."
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.