World English Bible · Under Assyria
2 Chronicles 29
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began to reign when he was twenty-five years old, and he reigned twenty-nine years in . His mother's name was , the daughter of . He did that which was right in eyes, according to all that his had done. In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of house and repaired them. He brought in the priests and the and gathered them together into the wide place on the east, and said to them, "Listen to me, you ! Now yourselves, and the , the of your fathers, and carry the filthiness out of the place. For our fathers were , and have done that which was evil in our sight, and have forsaken him, and have turned away their faces from the habitation of , and turned their backs. Also they have shut up the doors of the porch, and put out the lamps, and have not nor offered burnt offerings in the place to the of Israel. Therefore was on Judah and , and he has them to be tossed back and forth, to be an astonishment and a hissing, as you see with your eyes. For behold, our fathers have fallen , and our sons and our daughters and our wives are in for this. Now it is in to make a with , the of Israel, that his may turn away from us. My sons, don't be negligent now; for has chosen you to stand before him, to minister to him, and that you should be his ministers and ." Then the arose: , the son of , and Joel the son of , of the sons of the ; and of the sons of , the son of , and the son of ; and of the , Joah the son of , and the son of Joah; and of the sons of Elizaphan, Shimri and ; and of the sons of , and ; and of the sons of , Jehuel and ; and of the sons of Jeduthun, and . They gathered their brothers, themselves, and went in, according to the of the king by words, to cleanse house. The priests went into the inner part of house to cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness that they found in temple into the court of house. The took it from there to carry it out to the brook . Now they began on the first day of the first month to , and on the eighth day of the month they came to porch. They house in eight days, and on the sixteenth day of the first month they finished. Then they went in to the king within the palace and said, "We have cleansed all house, including the of burnt offering with all its vessels, and the table of show bread with all its vessels. Moreover, we have prepared and all the vessels which King threw away in his reign when he was . Behold, they are before ." Then the king arose early, gathered the princes of the city, and went up to house. They brought seven bulls, seven rams, seven lambs, and seven male goats, for a for , for , and for Judah. He commanded the priests the sons of to offer them on . So they killed the bulls, and the priests received and sprinkled it on the . They killed the rams and sprinkled on the . They also killed the lambs and sprinkled on the . They brought near the male goats for the before the king and ; and they on them. Then the priests killed them, and they made a with their on the , to make atonement for all Israel; for the king commanded that the burnt offering and the should be made for all Israel. He set the in house with cymbals, with stringed instruments, and with harps, according to the of , of Gad the king's , and the ; for the was from by his . The stood with instruments, and the priests with the . commanded them to offer the burnt offering on the . When the burnt offering began, song also began, along with the and instruments of king of Israel. All , the singers sang, and the trumpeters sounded. All this continued until the burnt offering was finished. When they had finished , the king and all who were present with him bowed themselves and . Moreover the king and the princes commanded the to sing to with the words of , and of the . They sang with gladness, and they bowed their heads and . Then answered, "Now you have yourselves to . Come near and bring and thank into house." brought in and thank , and as many as were of a willing brought burnt offerings. The number of the burnt offerings which brought was seventy bulls, one hundred rams, and two hundred lambs. All these were for a burnt offering to . 33The things were six hundred head of cattle and three thousand sheep. But the priests were too few, so that they could not skin all the burnt offerings. Therefore their brothers the helped them until the work was ended, and until the priests had themselves, for the were more upright in to themselves than the priests. Also the burnt offerings were in abundance, with the and with the drink for every burnt offering. So the of house was set in order. and all the people rejoiced because of that which had prepared for the people; for the thing was done suddenly.
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · Under Assyria, 745 BC to 612 BC ›
Assyria at full stretch, deporting whole populations as policy. The northern kingdom is destroyed in 722 BC and Judah survives as a tribute-paying vassal.
- Assyria
- The first empire to run mass deportation as ordinary administration: move the leadership somewhere else, settle strangers in their place, and the province stops being a nation. It worked. Samaria fell in 722 BC and the northern tribes did not come back. Assyria also advertised its cruelty deliberately, carving flayings and impalements on palace walls where envoys would see them, because terror is cheaper than garrisons.
- Judah
- Survives by paying. Hezekiah rebels, Sennacherib takes forty-six Judean towns and besieges Jerusalem in 701 BC, and the city holds. The Assyrian account boasts of shutting Hezekiah up like a bird in a cage and pointedly does not claim to have taken the city, which is one of the more interesting silences in ancient records.
- Egypt
- The splintered reed of a staff that Assyria's field commander mocks Judah for leaning on. It promises help and cannot deliver, and Isaiah spends decades saying so. Assyria eventually invades and sacks Thebes.
- Further afield
- Greece is in its archaic period, founding colonies from Spain to the Black Sea. Rome is under kings. Assyria's own libraries are collecting the literature of Mesopotamia, which is how Gilgamesh survived to be read again in the nineteenth century.