Old Testament Books

"Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed-- and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors-- and they have no comforter. And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun."

"For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again."

"And moreover I saw under the sun, in the place of justice, that wickedness was there; and in the place of righteousness, that wickedness was there."

"That which is was long ago, and that which is to be hath already been; and God bringeth back again that which is past."

"I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him."

"I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil--this is the gift of God."

"He hath made everything beautiful in its time."

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace."

"There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God."

"For what profit comes to mortals from all the toil and anxiety of heart with which they toil under the sun? Every day sorrow and grief are their occupation; even at night their hearts are not at rest. This also is vanity."

"I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness. The wise man has eyes in his head, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both. Then I thought in my heart, "The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?" I said in my heart, "This too is meaningless." For the wise man, like the fool, will not be long remembered; in days to come both will be forgotten. Like the fool, the wise man too must die!"

"Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."

"Laughter," I said, "is foolish. And what does pleasure accomplish?"

"I said in my heart: I will go, and abound with delights, and enjoy good things. And I saw that this also was vanity."

"I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."

"What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose."

"I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men! I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. What is twisted cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted."

"There is no remembrance of the former generations; neither shall there be any remembrance of the latter generations that are to come, among those that shall come after."

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us."

"The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. (KJV)"

"I rather think that the Genesis story of the Creation needs to be rewritten all over again. In the Chinese novel Red Chamber Dream, the boy hero, a sentimental mollycoddle very fond of female company and admiring his beautiful female cousins intensely and all but sorry for himself for being a boy, says that, "Woman is made of water and man is made of clay," the reason being that he thinks his female cousins are sweet and pure and clever, while he himself and his boy companions are ugly and muddle-headed and bad-tempered. If the writer of the Genesis story had been a Paoyü and knew what he was talking about, he would have written a different story. God took a handful of mud, molded it into human shape and breathed into its nostrils a breath, and there was Adam. But Adam began to crack and fall to pieces, and so He took some water, and with the water He molded the clay, and this water which entered into Adam's being was called Eve, and only in having Eve in his being was Adam's life complete. At least that seems to me to be the symbolic significance of marriage. Woman is water and man is clay, and water permeates and molds the clay, and the clay holds the water and gives its substance, in which water moves and lives and has its full being."

"The Genesis story of the reason why Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden was not that they had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, as is popularly conceived, but the fear lest they should disobey a second time and eat of the Tree of Life and live forever."

"And God showed great kindness to man in this, that He did not suffer him to remain in sin for ever; but, as it were, by a kind of banishment, cast him out of Paradise, in order that, having by punishment expiated, within an appointed time, the sin, and having been disciplined, he should afterwards be restored. Wherefore also, when man had been formed in this world, it is mystically written in Genesis, as if he had been twice placed in Paradise; so that the one was fulfilled when he was placed there, and the second will be fulfilled after the resurrection and judgment... And as to God’s calling, and saying, Where art thou, Adam? God did this, not as if ignorant of this; but, being long-suffering, He gave him an opportunity of repentance and confession."

"The tree of knowledge itself was good, and its fruit was good. For it was not the tree, as some think, but the disobedience, which had death in it. For there was nothing else in the fruit than only knowledge; but knowledge is good when one uses it discreetly. But Adam, being yet an infant in age, was on this account as yet unable to receive knowledge worthily."

"The sun is a type of God, and the moon of man. And as the sun far surpasses the moon in power and glory, so far does God surpass man. And as the sun remains ever full, never becoming less, so does God always abide perfect... But the moon wanes monthly, and in a manner dies, being a type of man; then it is born again, and is crescent, for a pattern of the future resurrection. In like manner also the three days which were before the luminaries, are types of the Trinity, of God, and His Word, and His wisdom. And the fourth is the type of man, who needs light."

"A Merry Christmas & Happy New Year compliments of Elizabeth Cady Stanton Genesis Chap I says Man & Woman were a simultaneous creation Chap II says Woman was an afterthought Which is true?"

"The first chapter of Genesis... is a hymn to an orderly and bountiful cosmos. ... It is obvious to everyone except creationists that this chapter was never, not even when it was first written, intended as a historical description of the history of the cosmos. It described the work of creation as categories, not as a timeline."

"Abraham has a nephew, Lot, who settles in Sodom. Because the residents engage in anal sex and comparable sins, God immolates every man, woman, and child in a divine napalm attack. Lot’s wife, for the crime of turning around to look at the inferno, is put to death as well. Abraham undergoes a test of his moral values when God orders him to take his son Isaac to a mountaintop, tie him up, cut his throat, and burn his body as a gift to the Lord. Isaac is spared only because at the last moment an angel stays his father’s hand. For millennia readers have puzzled over why God insisted on this horrifying trial. One interpretation is that God intervened not because Abraham had passed the test but because he had failed it, but that is anachronistic: obedience to divine authority, not reverence for human life, was the cardinal virtue. Isaac’s son Jacob has a daughter, Dinah. Dinah is kidnapped and raped—apparently a customary form of courtship at the time, since the rapist’s family then offers to purchase her from her own family as a wife for the rapist. Dinah’s brothers explain that an important moral principle stands in the way of this transaction: the rapist is uncircumcised. So they make a counteroffer: if all the men in the rapist’s hometown cut off their foreskins, Dinah will be theirs. While the men are incapacitated with bleeding penises, the brothers invade the city, plunder and destroy it, massacre the men, and carry off the women and children. When Jacob worries that neighboring tribes may attack them in revenge, his sons explain that it was worth the risk: “Should our sister be treated like a whore?” Soon afterward they reiterate their commitment to family values by selling their brother Joseph into slavery."

"[F]or all this reverence, the Bible is one long celebration of violence. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord God took one of Adam’s ribs, and made he a woman. And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain. And she again bare his brother Abel. And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. With a world population of exactly four, that works out to a homicide rate of 25 per cent, which is about a thousand times higher than the equivalent rates in Western countries today. No sooner do men and women begin to multiply than God decides they are sinful and that the suitable punishment is genocide. (In Bill Cosby’s comedy sketch, a neighbor begs Noah for a hint as to why he is building an ark. Noah replies, “How long can you tread water?”) When the flood recedes, God instructs Noah in its moral lesson, namely the code of vendetta: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.”"

"Who that has understanding will sup­pose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, ex­isted without a sun, and moon, and stars? and that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? And who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden, towards the east, and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life? and again, that one was a partaker of good and evil by masticating what was taken from the tree? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indi­cate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally. Cain also, when going forth from the presence of God, certainly appears to thoughtful men as likely to lead the reader to inquire what is the presence of God, and what is the meaning of going out from Him."

"If Genesis 1:28 were a ‘command’ that applied to every individual, then Paul would have been disobedient in his apostolic singleness. Paul and everyone else would be obligated to pursue marriage and to order their marriages to produce many descendants."

"Genesis 1:28 is not a commandment, but a blessing. It does not refer to what humans must do to please God, but to what God does for and through humankind. The text says, "God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply'" (RSV). Fertility is not a command but a blessing that God gives to his creatures, to animals as well as humans (Gen. 1:22). The filling of the Earth is a gift of God's wisdom and shows forth his glory as Creator (Ps. 104:24, 31; Isa. 6:3)."

"...the great Book of Genesis—a marvellous cup filled with the “wine” of the esoteric knowledge of the Sanctuaries of ancient days. Temples of the Ageless Wisdom exist to-day, even if less easily discoverable, and in them are to be found the selfsame teachings, laws, successions, Initiations and radiations of the light of Truth. World changes are not reflected in the Mysteries, which are repositories and conveyors of eternal and unchanging Ideas. A sack of corn containing a silver cup awaits every Benjamin who finds himself called by a Hierophant (Joseph) from the “famine-stricken” outer world to the “storehouse” from which an elder brother (a Master) Who has already attained will, in prodigal abundance, supply a gift of the golden grain of eternal verities."

"Certain portions of the text of the Bible, if taken literally, cannot possibly be regarded as in any way conducive to a high moral standard. In Genesis XII:10-20, for example, Abraham passes his wife off as his sister that Pharaoh may possess her. His motive in doing so was that his life might be spared and he be greatly rewarded. Isaac transgresses similarly and for the same reason, as stated in Genesis XXVI:6-11. In this latter case the Lord God blessed Isaac and he becomes rich and prospers. Genesis XXVII:1-45, recounts a most deplorable example of deliberate deceit by Jacob, who later becomes a favoured patriarch under the inspiration of the Lord."

"The Biblical words about the genesis of heaven and earth are not words of information but words of appreciation. The story of creation is not a description of how the world came into being but a song about the glory of the world's having come into being."

"As the Mishnah records, the Rabbis of the House of Hillel and later Jewish law interpreted Genesis 1:28 to require a minimum of two children – specifically a boy and a girl, so that human creation would mirror divine creation. Couples who were able to have more children, however, were supposed to have as many as they could, based on the verse, “Sow your seed in the morning, and do not refrain from doing so in the evening,” interpreted to mean the beginning and later stages of life (Ecclesiastes 11:6). This undoubtedly reflected the reality of a time when fewer children survived to adulthood."

"The god is depicted... on his potter wheel... creating the body of the Pharaoh and his ka and his eternal soul by petrifying, by using clay. ...[H]e kneads humanity and the gods with clay and silt. ...[T]his is the Genesis that we are accustomed to read in the Bible, and it is also the type of Genesis that is depicted in the Quran. ...The ka is the soul in eternal stone."

"Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel. (KJV)"

"Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been. (KJV)"

"See that ye fall not out by the way. (KJV)"

"Ye shall eat the fat of the land. (KJV)"

"Ye are spies; to see the nakedness of the land ye are come. (KJV)"

"Jacob saw that there was corn in Egypt. (KJV)"

"And the thin ears devoured the seven good ears. (KJV)"

"And the lean and the ill favoured kine did eat up the first seven fat kine. (KJV)"

"And she caught him by his garment, saying, Lie with me; and he left his garment in her hand, and fled. (KJV)"

"Some evil beast hath devoured him. (KJV)"

"Behold, this dreamer cometh. (KJV)"

"Behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf. (KJV)"

"Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a coat of many colours. (KJV)"