King James Version · Under Assyria
Amos 1
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The words of , who was among the herdmen of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of king of Judah, and in the days of the son of king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. And he said, will roar from , and utter his voice from ; and the habitations of the shall mourn, and the top of shall wither. Thus saith ; For three of , and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have threshed with instruments of iron: But I will send a into the house of Hazael, which shall devour the palaces of Ben–hadad. I will break also the bar of , and the inhabitant from the plain of , and him that holdeth the sceptre from the house of : and the people of shall go into unto , saith . Thus saith ; For three of , and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they the whole , to them up to : But I will send a on the wall of , which shall devour the palaces thereof: And I will the inhabitant from , and him that holdeth the sceptre from , and I will turn mine hand against : and of the shall , saith . Thus saith ; For three of , and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they up the whole to , and remembered not the brotherly : But I will send a on the wall of , which shall devour the palaces thereof. Thus saith ; For three of , and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because he did pursue his brother with , and did cast off all , and his did tear perpetually, and he kept his for ever: But I will send a upon , which shall devour the palaces of Bozrah. Thus saith ; For three of , and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have ripped up the women with child of , that they might enlarge their border: But I will kindle a in the wall of , and it shall devour the palaces thereof, with shouting in the day of battle, with a tempest in the day of the whirlwind: And their king shall go into , he and his princes together, saith .
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.