World English Bible · Under Assyria
Amos 1
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
The words of , who was among the herdsmen 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. He said: " will roar from , and utter his voice from ; and the pastures of the will mourn, and the top of will wither." says: "For three of , yes, for four, I will not turn away its punishment, because they have threshed with instruments of iron; but I will send a into the house of Hazael, and it will devour the palaces of Ben . I will break the bar of , and the inhabitant from the valley of , and him who holds the from the house of ; and the people of shall go into to ," . says: "For three of , yes, for four, I will not turn away its punishment, because they the whole community, to them up to ; but I will send a on the wall of , and it will devour its palaces. I will the inhabitant from , and him who holds the from ; and I will turn my hand against ; and of the will ," . says: "For three of , yes, for four, I will not turn away its punishment; because they up the whole community to , and didn't remember the brotherly ; but I will send a on the wall of , and it will devour its palaces." says: "For three of , yes, for four, I will not turn away its punishment, because he pursued his brother with and cast off all , and his raged continually, and he kept his ; but I will send a on , and it will devour the palaces of Bozrah." says: "For three of , yes, for four, I will not turn away its punishment, because they have ripped open the pregnant women of , that they may enlarge their border. But I will kindle a in the wall of , and it will devour its palaces, with shouting in the day of battle, with a storm in the day of the whirlwind; and their king will go into , he and his princes together," .
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. 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.