King James Version · Under Assyria
Amos 5
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Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a , O . The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise: she is forsaken upon her land; there is none to raise her up. For thus saith ; The city that went out by a thousand shall leave an hundred, and that which went forth by an hundred shall leave ten, to the . For thus saith unto the , Seek ye me, and ye shall live: But seek not Beth–el, nor enter into , and pass not to Beer–sheba: for shall surely go into , and Beth–el shall come to nought. Seek , and ye shall live; lest he break out like in the , and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Beth–el. Ye who turn to wormwood, and leave off in the earth, Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the of the earth: is his name: That strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the . They hate him that rebuketh in the , and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly. Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon , and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink of them. For I know your manifold and your mighty : they afflict the , they take a bribe, and they turn aside in the from their right. Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time. Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so , the of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken. Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish in the : it may be that of hosts will be unto of . Therefore , the of hosts, , saith thus; shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the highways, Alas! alas! and they shall call the husbandman to , and such as are skilful of to . And in all vineyards shall be : for I will pass through thee, saith . Woe unto you that ! to what end is it for you? is , and not . As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a bit him. Shall not be , and not ? even very dark, and no brightness in it? I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me and your meat , I will not accept them: neither will I regard the of your fat . Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let run down as waters, and as a mighty stream. Have ye offered unto me and in forty years, O ? But ye have borne the of your and Chiun your , the star of your , which ye made to yourselves. Therefore will I cause you to go into beyond , saith , whose name is The of hosts.
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.