World English Bible · Under Assyria
Amos 2
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says: "For three of , yes, for four, I will not turn away its punishment, because he burned the bones of the king of into lime; but I will send a on , and it will devour the palaces of Kerioth; and will with tumult, with shouting, and with the sound of the ; and I will the judge from among them, and will kill all its princes with him," . says: "For three of Judah, yes, for four, I will not turn away its punishment, because they have rejected law, and have not kept his , and their lies have led them astray, after which their fathers walked; but I will send a on Judah, and it will devour the palaces of ." says: "For three of Israel, yes, for four, I will not turn away its punishment, because they have sold for silver, and for a pair of ; They trample the heads of into of the earth and deny to the oppressed. A man and his use the same maiden, to profane my name. They lay themselves down beside every on clothes taken in pledge. In the house of their they drink the of those who have been fined. Yet I destroyed the before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was strong as the oaks; yet I destroyed his fruit from above, and his roots from beneath. Also I brought you up out of the land of and led you forty years in , to possess the land of the . I up some of your sons for , and some of your young men for . Isn't this true, you ?" . "But you gave the to drink, and commanded , saying, 'Don't !' Behold, I will crush you in your place, as a cart crushes that is full of grain. Flight will from the swift. The strong won't strengthen his force. The mighty won't himself. He who handles the bow won't stand. He who is swift of foot won't escape. He who rides the horse won't himself. He who is courageous among the mighty will flee away on that day," .
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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.