King James Version · Under Assyria
2 Kings 19
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And it came to pass, when king heard it, that he rent his clothes, and covered himself with , and went into the . And he sent , which was over the household, and the , and the of the priests, covered with , to the the son of . And they said unto him, Thus saith , This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and blasphemy: for the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth. It may be thy will hear all the words of Rab–shakeh, whom the king of his master hath sent to the living ; and will reprove the words which thy hath heard: wherefore lift up thy for that are left. 5So the servants of king came to . And said unto them, Thus shall ye say to your master, Thus saith , Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard, with which the servants of the king of have blasphemed me. Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and shall return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall in his own land. So Rab–shakeh returned, and found the king of warring against : for he had heard that he was departed from . And when he heard say of king of , Behold, he is come out to fight against thee: he sent again unto , saying, Thus shall ye speak to king of Judah, saying, Let not thy in whom thou trustest deceive thee, saying, shall not be into the hand of the king of . Behold, thou hast heard what the kings of have done to all lands, by destroying them utterly: and shalt thou be ? Have the gods of the nations them which my fathers have destroyed; as , and , and , and the children of which were in Thelasar? Where is the king of , and the king of , and the king of the city of , of , and Ivah? And received the letter of the hand of the , and read it: and went up into the , and spread it before . And before , and said, O of Israel, which dwellest between the cherubims, thou art the , even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; thou hast made and earth. , thine ear, and hear: open, , thine eyes, and see: and hear the words of , which hath sent him to the living . Of a truth, , the kings of have destroyed the nations and their lands, And have cast their gods into the : for they were no gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone: therefore they have destroyed them. Now therefore, O our , I beseech thee, thou us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art , even thou only. Then the son of sent to , saying, Thus saith of Israel, That which thou hast to me against king of I have heard. This is the word that hath spoken concerning him; The virgin the daughter of hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of hath shaken her head at thee. Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the One of Israel. By thy thou hast reproached , and hast said, With of my chariots I am come up to the height of the mountains, to the sides of , and will cut down the tall cedar trees thereof, and the choice fir trees thereof: and I will enter into the lodgings of his borders, and into the forest of his . I have digged and drunk strange waters, and with the sole of my feet have I dried up all the rivers of besieged places. Hast thou not heard long ago how I have done it, and of ancient times that I have formed it? now have I brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste fenced cities into ruinous heaps. Therefore their inhabitants were of small , they were dismayed and confounded; they were as the grass of the field, and as the green herb, as the grass on the housetops, and as corn blasted before it be grown up. But I know thy abode, and thy going out, and thy coming in, and thy rage against me. Because thy rage against me and thy tumult is come up into mine ears, therefore I will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy , and I will turn thee back by by which thou camest. And this shall be a sign unto thee, Ye shall eat this year such things as grow of themselves, and in the second year that which springeth of the same; and in the third year sow ye, and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat the fruits thereof. And that is escaped of the house of Judah shall yet again take root downward, and bear fruit upward. For out of shall go forth a , and they that escape out of mount : the of of hosts shall do this. Therefore thus saith concerning the king of , He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it. By that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, saith . For I will defend this city, to it, for mine own sake, and for my servant ’s sake. And it came to pass that night, that went out, and smote in the camp of the an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all corpses. So king of departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at . And it came to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of his , that and his sons smote him with : and they escaped into the land of Armenia. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead.
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.