World English Bible · Under Assyria
Amos 3
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Hear this word that has spoken against you, , against the whole family which I brought up out of the land of , saying: "I have only chosen you of all the families of the earth. Therefore I will punish you for all of your ." Do two walk together, unless they have agreed? Will a lion roar in the thicket, when he has no prey? Does a young lion cry out of his den, if he has caught nothing? Can a bird fall in a trap on the earth, where no snare is set for him? Does a snare spring up from the ground, when there is nothing to catch? Does the alarm sound in a city, without the people being afraid? Does evil happen to a city, and hasn't done it? Surely will do nothing, unless he reveals his secret to his servants . The lion has roared. Who will not fear? has spoken. Who can but ? Proclaim in the palaces at , and in the palaces in the land of , and say, "Assemble yourselves on the mountains of , and see what unrest is in her, and what is among them." "Indeed they don't know to do right," , "Who hoard plunder and loot in their palaces." Therefore says: "An adversary will overrun the land; and he will pull down your strongholds, and your fortresses will be plundered." says: "As the rescues out of the of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear, so shall the be rescued who sit in on the corner of a couch, and on the silken cushions of a bed." "Listen, and testify against the house of ," , the of Armies. "For in the day that I visit the of Israel on him, I will also visit the of ; and the of the will , and fall to the ground. I will strike the winter house with the summer house; and the houses of ivory will , and the great houses will have an end," .
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.