World English Bible · Under Assyria
2 Chronicles 35
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kept a to in . They killed on the fourteenth day of the first month. He set the priests in their offices and encouraged them in the of house. He said to the who taught all Israel, who were to , "Put the ark in the house which king of Israel built. It will no longer be a burden on your shoulders. Now your and his people Israel. Prepare yourselves after your fathers' houses by your divisions, according to the writing of king of Israel, and according to the writing of his son. Stand in the place according to the divisions of the fathers' houses of your brothers the children of the people, and let there be for each a of a fathers' house of the . Kill lamb, yourselves, and prepare for your brothers, to do according to word by ." gave to the children of the people, of the flock, lambs and young goats, all of them for , to all who were present, to the number of thirty thousand, and three thousand bulls. These were of the king's substance. His princes gave a free will to the people, to the priests, and to the . Hilkiah, , and Jehiel, the of house, gave to the priests for two thousand six hundred small livestock, and three hundred head of cattle. Conaniah also, and and Nethanel, his brothers, and , Jeiel, and , the chiefs of the , gave to the for five thousand small livestock and five hundred head of cattle. So the was prepared, and the priests stood in their place, and the by their divisions, according to the king's . They killed lambs, and the priests sprinkled which they received from their hands, and the skinned them. They removed the burnt offerings, that they might give them according to the divisions of the fathers' houses of the children of the people, to offer to , as in the book of . They did the same with the cattle. They roasted with according to the . They boiled the in pots, in cauldrons, and in pans, and carried them quickly to all the children of the people. Afterward they prepared for themselves and for the priests, because the priests the sons of were busy with the burnt offerings and until night. Therefore the prepared for themselves and for the priests the sons of . The singers, the sons of , were in their place, according to the of , , , and Jeduthun the king's ; and the gatekeepers were at every . They didn't need to depart from their , because their brothers the prepared for them. 16So all the of was prepared the same day, to keep , and to offer burnt offerings on , according to the of King . The who were present kept at that time, and the feast of seven days. There was no like that kept in Israel from the days of the , nor did any of the kings of Israel keep such a as kept—with the priests, the , and all Judah and Israel who were present, and the inhabitants of . 19This was kept in the eighteenth year of the reign of . After all this, when had prepared , king of went up to fight against by the , and went out against him. But he sent ambassadors to him, saying, "What have I to do with you, you king of Judah? I come not against you today, but against the house with which I have war. has commanded me to make haste. Beware that it is who is with me, that he not destroy you." Nevertheless would not turn from him, but disguised himself, that he might fight with him, and didn't listen to the words of from the of , and came to fight in the valley of . The archers shot at King ; and the king said to his servants, "Take me away, because I am seriously wounded!" So his servants took him out of the chariot, and put him in the second chariot that he had, and brought him to ; and he , and was buried in the of his fathers. All Judah and mourned for . for , and all the singing men and singing women spoke of in their to this day; and they made them an in Israel. Behold, they are written in the . Now the rest of the acts of and his good deeds, according to that which is written in law, and his acts, first and last, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.
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.