King James Version · Under Assyria
Amos 3
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
Hear this word that hath spoken against you, O , against the whole family which I brought up from the land of , saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your . Can two walk together, except they be agreed? Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey? will a young lion cry out of his den, if he have taken nothing? Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth, where no gin is for him? shall one take up a snare from the earth, and have taken nothing at all? Shall a be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and hath not done it? Surely will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants . The lion hath roared, who will not fear? hath spoken, who can but ? Publish in the palaces at , and in the palaces in the land of , and say, Assemble yourselves upon the mountains of , and behold the great tumults in the midst thereof, and the oppressed in the midst thereof. For they know not to do right, saith , who store up and robbery in their palaces. Therefore thus saith ; An adversary there shall be even round about the land; and he shall bring down thy strength from thee, and thy palaces shall be spoiled. Thus saith ; As the taketh out of the of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear; so shall the be taken out that in in the corner of a bed, and in in a couch. Hear ye, and testify in the house of , saith , the of hosts, That in the day that I shall visit the of Israel upon him I will also visit the of Beth–el: and the of the , and fall to the ground. And I will smite the winter house with the summer house; and the houses of ivory shall , and the great houses shall have an end, 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.