King James Version · Under Assyria
2 Kings 23
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And the king sent, and they gathered unto him all the of Judah and of . And the king went up into the , and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of with him, and the priests, and , and all the people, both small and great: and he read in their ears all the words of the book of which was found in the . And the king stood by a pillar, and made a before , to walk after , and to keep his and his testimonies and his with all their and all their , to perform the words of this that were written in this book. And all the people stood to . And the king commanded the , and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of of all the vessels that were made for , and for the grove, and for of : and he burned them without in the fields of , and carried the of them unto Beth–el. And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to in the in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about ; them also that unto , to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to of . And he brought out the grove from the , without , unto the brook , and burned it at the brook , and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the of the children of the people. And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the , where the women wove hangings for the grove. And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the where the priests had , from to Beer–sheba, and brake down the of the that were in the entering in of the of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on a man’s left hand at the . Nevertheless the priests of the came not up to the of in , but they did eat of the among their brethren. And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the to . And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entering in of the , by the chamber of –melech the chamberlain, which was in the suburbs, and burned the chariots of the sun with . And the that were on the top of the upper chamber of , which the kings of Judah had made, and the which had made in the two courts of the , did the king beat down, and brake them down from thence, and cast of them into the brook . And the that were before , which were on of the mount of corruption, which the king of Israel had builded for the of the , and for the of the , and for the of , did the king defile. And he brake in pieces the , and cut down the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men. Moreover the that was at Beth–el, and the which the son of , who made Israel to , had made, both that and the he brake down, and burned the , and stamped it small to powder, and burned the grove. And as turned himself, he spied the sepulchres that were there in the mount, and sent, and took the bones out of the sepulchres, and burned them upon the , and polluted it, according to the word of which the proclaimed, who proclaimed these words. Then he said, What title is that that I see? And the men of the city told him, It is the of the , which came from Judah, and proclaimed these things that thou hast done against the of Beth–el. And he said, Let him alone; let no man move his bones. So they let his bones alone, with the bones of the that came out of . And all the houses also of the that were in the cities of , which the kings of Israel had made to provoke to , took away, and did to them according to all the acts that he had done in Beth–el. And he slew all the priests of the that were there upon the , and burned men’s bones upon them, and returned to . And the king commanded all the people, saying, Keep unto your , as in the book of this . Surely there was not holden such a from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah; 23But in the eighteenth year of king , wherein this was holden to in . Moreover the workers with familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the , and the idols, and all the that were spied in the land of Judah and in , did , that he might perform the words of which were written in the book that the priest found in the . And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to with all , and with all his , and with all his might, according to all of ; neither after him arose there any like him. Notwithstanding turned not from the fierceness of his great , wherewith his was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations that had provoked him withal. And said, I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel, and will cast off this city which I have chosen, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there. Now the rest of the acts of , and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? In his days –nechoh king of went up against the king of to the river : and king went against him; and he slew him at , when he had seen him. And his servants carried him in a chariot from , and brought him to , and in his own . And the people of the land took the son of , and him, and made him king in his ’s stead. was twenty and three years old when he began to reign; and he reigned three months in . And his mother’s name was , the daughter of of . And he did that which was evil in the sight of , according to all that his fathers had done. And –nechoh put him in bands at in the land of , that he might not reign in ; and put the land to a tribute of an hundred of silver, and a of gold. And –nechoh made the son of king in the room of his , and turned his name to , and took away: and he came to , and there. And gave the silver and the gold to ; but he taxed the land to give the money according to the of : he exacted the silver and the gold of the people of the land, of every one according to his taxation, to give it unto –nechoh. was twenty and five years old when he began to reign; and he reigned eleven years in . And his mother’s name was Zebudah, the daughter of of Rumah. And he did that which was evil in the sight of , according to all that his fathers had done.
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.