Under Assyria

Swollen with refugees from the destroyed north, newly walled and re-plumbed under Hezekiah, and besieged by Sennacherib in 701 BC. Its survival when Samaria had fallen fed a dangerous confidence that the city could never fall, which Jeremiah later spent his life contradicting.

Besieged for three years and taken in 722 BC. Assyrian records claim over twenty-seven thousand deported, and the resettlement of foreigners in their place begins here.

Josiah tore down its altar and burned bones on it, fulfilling a word spoken there three centuries earlier.

An Assyrian provincial capital after the north fell.

Made the capital by Sennacherib and built on a colossal scale: a wall some twelve kilometers around, palaces lined with carved reliefs, and a library of tablets that has given us most of what we know about Mesopotamian literature. Jonah is sent here.

A subject city under Assyrian control, rebellious and repeatedly put down. When Merodach-Baladan sends envoys to Hezekiah, he is a Babylonian rebel looking for allies against Assyria, which is why Isaiah reacts so sharply to Hezekiah showing them the treasury.

Destroyed as a power in 732 BC by Tiglath-pileser III, exactly as Isaiah told Ahaz it would be, and made an Assyrian province.

The 'splintered reed of a staff' Assyria's field commander mocks Hezekiah for leaning on, which will run into the hand of anyone who leans on it. Isaiah repeatedly warns Judah against Egyptian alliances, because Egypt in this century could promise more than it could deliver.

The world power, at full stretch under Tiglath-Pileser III, Shalmaneser V, Sargon II, and Sennacherib. It destroys Samaria in 722 BC and deports Israel, then reduces Judah to a tribute-paying vassal. Nearly every prophet of this century is writing with Assyrian armies somewhere in the frame.

The harbor Jonah went down to in order to find a ship going the other way.

A tribute-paying vassal on the Egyptian frontier, valuable because it controlled the last stop on the caravan road before the desert.

Paying tribute and periodically besieged, but hard to take because the main city sat on an island.

The first part of Israel that Assyria took, deported, and resettled, which is where its mixed population came from and why Isaiah's promise of light to this region carries the weight it does.

Damascus falls to Assyria in 732 BC and Aram ceases to be an independent power, which removes Israel's buffer and leaves it facing Assyria directly.

An Assyrian tax district. Ashdod revolted in 711 BC and was crushed, and Ekron's kings appear in Assyrian records as tribute-payers. An inscription found at Ekron in 1996 names one of them, which settled the site's identification for good.

An Assyrian vassal, its kings listed among those paying tribute. Isaiah's oracle against Moab is unusual for the grief in it, weeping for a neighbour rather than gloating over one.

The splintered reed of the Rabshakeh's speech. Under Cushite rule and no match for Assyria, which is exactly why Isaiah spent his career telling Judah not to lean on it.

The superpower, and the era takes its name from them. Tiglath-pileser III turned tribute into annexation, Samaria fell in 722, and Sennacherib reached the walls of Jerusalem in 701 without taking it.

A southern Mesopotamian people under Assyrian rule and repeatedly in revolt. Merodach-baladan, who sends envoys to Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20, is a Chaldean prince making trouble for Assyria and shopping for allies.

Finished as a power. Damascus fell to Tiglath-pileser III in 732 BC, which is what Isaiah 7 is about, and Aram became an Assyrian province.

The coastal cities pay tribute and survive by paying. Their real expansion in this period is westward across the Mediterranean, founding colonies as far as Spain and passing the alphabet to Greece on the way.

Created, in effect, by deportation policy. Assyria removed the northern leadership and resettled the land with people from five other places, and 2 Kings says plainly that the result feared the LORD and served their own gods.

Deported early with the rest of the territory east of the Jordan, and heard from no further.

Taken with the rest of the north. Dan is one of the tribes missing from the list of the sealed in Revelation, and interpreters have offered explanations for that for eighteen centuries without agreeing on one.

Among the first taken, by Tiglath-Pileser III. Isaiah's line about the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali being brought into contempt, and then seeing a great light, is written about this specific deportation, which is why Matthew quotes it when Jesus begins teaching in exactly that region.

Taken by Assyria with the rest of the eastern territory before Samaria itself fell.

Taken with the north, its valley becoming an Assyrian province administered from Megiddo.

Deported with Naphtali and the rest of the north, and its territory resettled by Assyria with other conquered peoples, which is part of why Galilee was still being called Galilee of the nations seven hundred years later.

Both halves go into the Assyrian deportation, and the prophets use the name Joseph afterwards as a way of talking about the lost north as a whole.

Deported by Assyria in 722 BC along with the rest of the north, and not traceable afterwards. Hosea's book, which uses the name Ephraim more than any other, is addressed to a people about to stop existing as a people.

The eastern half goes first, taken by Tiglath-Pileser III a decade or so before Samaria falls, because it was the part nobody could defend. The western half follows in 722 BC.

Hezekiah holds one so large that the account has to admit the priests were caught unprepared, and he sends invitations north to the remnants of the tribes Assyria had deported. Josiah later holds one the text says had no equal since the days of the judges.

Hezekiah removes them, and Josiah goes further, defiling them and pulling down the sanctuary Jeroboam built at Bethel. Centralising all worship in Jerusalem is the reform, and it is as much a political act as a religious one.

A profession rather than a party. Scribes keep royal records, take dictation, and copy documents, and Jeremiah's assistant Baruch is one of them doing precisely that.

Repeatedly stripped to pay tribute, and used as a diplomatic instrument. Ahaz has a copy of an altar he admired in Damascus installed in it. Hezekiah later cuts the gold from its doors to buy Sennacherib off, and Josiah's repair work turns up a book of the law that had been lost somewhere inside it.

Still present in the south under Manasseh, who rebuilds what Hezekiah had pulled down, and finally purged by Josiah.

Josiah brings the pole out of the temple itself, burns it in the Kidron valley, and grinds it to dust, which tells you where it had ended up.

Ahaz is said to have made his son pass through the fire, and Manasseh after him, in the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem. Both were kings under Assyrian pressure, which is the context in which desperate religion tends to appear.

Hezekiah breaks it in pieces, because by his day people had been burning incense to it for centuries. He gives it the dismissive name Nehushtan, which means something like just a bit of bronze. An object commanded by God had become an idol without ever changing shape.