King James Version · Under Assyria
2 Chronicles 35
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Moreover kept a unto in : and they killed on the fourteenth day of the first month. And he set the priests in their charges, and encouraged them to the of the , And said unto the that taught all Israel, which were unto , Put the ark in the house which king of Israel did build; it shall not be a burden upon your shoulders: now your , and his people Israel, And prepare yourselves by the houses of your fathers, after your courses, according to the writing of king of Israel, and according to the writing of his son. And stand in the place according to the divisions of the families of the fathers of your brethren the people, and after the division of the families of the . So kill , and yourselves, and prepare your brethren, that they may do according to the word of by the hand of . And gave to the people, of the flock, lambs and kids, all for , for all that were present, to the number of thirty thousand, and three thousand bullocks: these were of the king’s substance. And his princes gave willingly unto the people, to the priests, and to the : Hilkiah and and Jehiel, of the house of , gave unto the priests for two thousand and six hundred small cattle, and three hundred oxen. Conaniah also, and and Nethaneel, his brethren, and and Jeiel and , chief of the , gave unto the for five thousand small cattle, and five hundred oxen. So the was prepared, and the priests stood in their place, and the in their courses, according to the king’s . And they killed , and the priests sprinkled from their hands, and the flayed them. And they removed the burnt offerings, that they might give according to the divisions of the families of the people, to offer unto , as in the book of . And so did they with the oxen. And they roasted with according to the : but the other sod they in pots, and in caldrons, and in pans, and divided them speedily among all the people. And afterward they made ready for themselves, and for the priests: because the priests the sons of were busied in of burnt offerings and until night; therefore the prepared for themselves, and for the priests the sons of . And the singers the sons of were in their place, according to the of , and , and , and Jeduthun the king’s ; and the porters waited at every ; they might not depart from their ; for their brethren the prepared for them. 16So all the of was prepared the same day, to keep , and to offer burnt offerings upon the of , according to the of king . And the that were present kept at that time, and the feast of seven days. And there was no like to that kept in Israel from the days of the ; neither did all the kings of Israel keep such a as kept, and the priests, and the , and all Judah and Israel that were present, and the inhabitants of . 19In the eighteenth year of the reign of was this kept. After all this, when had prepared , king of came up to fight against by : and went out against him. But he sent ambassadors to him, saying, What have I to do with thee, thou king of Judah? I come not against thee this day, but against the house wherewith I have war: for commanded me to make haste: forbear thee from meddling with , who is with me, that he destroy thee not. Nevertheless would not turn from him, but disguised himself, that he might fight with him, and hearkened not unto the words of from the of , and came to fight in the valley of . And the archers shot at king ; and the king said to his servants, Have me away; for I am sore wounded. His servants therefore took him out of that chariot, and put him in the second chariot that he had; and they brought him to , and he , and was buried in one of the sepulchres of his fathers. And all Judah and mourned for . And for : and all the singing men and the singing women spake of in their to this day, and made them an in Israel: and, behold, they are written in the . Now the rest of the acts of , and his goodness, according to that which was written in of , And his deeds, first and last, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. 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.