King James Version · Under Assyria
Amos 6
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Woe to them that are at ease in , and in the mountain of , which are named chief of the nations, to whom the came! Pass ye unto Calneh, and see; and from thence go ye to the great: then go down to of the : be they better than these kingdoms? or their border greater than your border? Ye that put far away the evil day, and cause the seat of to come near; That lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall; That chant to the sound of the viol, and invent to themselves instruments of musick, like ; That drink in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief ointments: but they are not grieved for the affliction of . Therefore now shall they go with the first that go , and the banquet of them that stretched themselves shall be removed. hath by himself, saith the of hosts, I abhor the excellency of , and hate his palaces: therefore will I up the city with all that is therein. And it shall come to pass, if there ten men in one house, that they shall . And a man’s uncle shall take him up, and he that burneth him, to bring out the bones out of the house, and shall say unto him that is by the sides of the house, Is there yet any with thee? and he shall say, No. Then shall he say, Hold thy : for we may not make mention of the name of . For, behold, commandeth, and he will smite the great house with breaches, and the little house with clefts. Shall horses run upon ? will one plow there with oxen? for ye have turned into gall, and the fruit of into hemlock: Ye which rejoice in a thing of nought, which say, Have we not taken to us by our own strength? But, behold, I will raise up against you a nation, O , saith the of hosts; and they shall afflict you from the entering in of Hemath unto the river of .
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.