World English Bible · Under Assyria
Amos 4
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Listen to this word, you cows of , who are on the mountain of , who oppress , who crush , who tell their husbands, "Bring us drinks!" has by his , "Behold, the days shall come on you that they will take you away with hooks, and the last of you with fish hooks. You will go out at the breaks in the wall, everyone straight before her; and you will cast yourselves into Harmon," . "Go to , and ; to , and more. Bring your every morning, your every three days, offer a of of that which is leavened, and proclaim free will and brag about them; for this pleases you, you ," . "I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and lack of bread in every town; yet you haven't returned to me," . "I also have withheld the from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest; and I caused it to on one city, and caused it not to on another city. One field was rained on, and the field where it didn't withered. So two or three cities staggered to one city to drink water, and were not satisfied; yet you haven't returned to me," . "I struck you with blight and mildew many times in your gardens and your vineyards, and the swarming have devoured your fig trees and your olive trees; yet you haven't returned to me," . "I sent plagues among you like I did . I have slain your young men with , and have your horses. I filled your nostrils with the stench of your camp, yet you haven't returned to me," . "I have overthrown some of you, as when overthrew and , and you were like a burning stick plucked out of the ; yet you haven't returned to me," . "Therefore I will do this to you, Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your , Israel. For, behold, he who forms the mountains, creates the wind, declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning , and treads on the of the earth: , the of Armies, is his name."
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.