World English Bible · Under Assyria
Amos 6
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Woe to those who are at ease in , and to those who are secure on the mountain of , the notable men of the chief of the nations, to whom the come! Go to Calneh, and see. From there go to the great. Then go down to of the . Are they better than these kingdoms? Is their border greater than your border? Alas for you who put far away the evil day, and cause the seat of to come near, who lie on beds of ivory, and stretch themselves on their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the middle of the stall, who strum on the strings of a harp, who invent for themselves instruments of music, like ; who drink in bowls, and anoint themselves with the best oils, but they are not grieved for the affliction of . Therefore they will now go with the first who go . The feasting and lounging will end. " has by himself," , the of Armies: "I abhor the pride of , and detest his fortresses. Therefore I will up the city with all that is in it. It will happen that if ten men in one house, they will . "When a man's relative carries him, even he who burns him, to bring bodies out of the house, and asks him who is in the innermost parts of the house, 'Is there yet any with you?' And he says, 'No;' then he will say, 'Hush! Indeed we must not mention name.' "For, behold, commands, and the great house will be smashed to pieces, and the little house into bits. Do horses run on the rocky crags? Does one plow there with oxen? But you have turned into poison, and the fruit of into bitterness, you who rejoice in a thing of nothing, who say, 'Haven't we taken for ourselves by our own strength?' For, behold, I will raise up against you a nation, ," , the of Armies; "and they will afflict you from the entrance of to the brook of the ."
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.