King James Version · Under Assyria
2 Kings 20
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In those days was sick unto . And the the son of came to him, and said unto him, Thus saith , Set thine house in order; for thou shalt , and not live. Then he turned to the wall, and unto , saying, I beseech thee, O , remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect , and have done that which is good in thy sight. And wept sore. And it came to pass, afore was gone out into the middle court, that to him, saying, Turn again, and tell the captain of my people, Thus saith , the of thy , I have heard thy , I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee: on the third day thou shalt go up unto the . And I will add unto thy days fifteen years; and I will thee and this city out of the hand of the king of ; and I will defend this city for mine own sake, and for my servant ’s sake. And said, Take a lump of figs. And they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered. And said unto , What shall be the sign that will heal me, and that I shall go up into the the third day? And said, This sign shalt thou have of , that will do the thing that he hath spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees? And answered, It is a thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees: nay, but let the shadow return backward ten degrees. And the cried unto : and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of . At that time Berodach–baladan, the son of , king of , sent letters and a present unto : for he had heard that had been sick. And hearkened unto them, and shewed them all the house of his precious things, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the precious ointment, and all the house of his armour, and all that was found in his : there was nothing in his house, nor in all his , that shewed them not. Then came the unto king , and said unto him, What said these men? and from whence came they unto thee? And said, They are come from a far country, even from . And he said, What have they seen in thine house? And answered, All the things that are in mine house have they seen: there is nothing among my that I have not shewed them. And said unto , Hear the word of . Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store unto this day, shall be carried into : nothing shall be left, saith . And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away; and they shall be in the palace of the king of . Then said unto , Good is the word of which thou hast spoken. And he said, Is it not good, if peace and truth be in my days? And the rest of the acts of , and all his might, and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? And slept with his fathers: and 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.