World English Bible · Under Assyria
Amos 7
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
Thus showed me: behold, he formed of the shooting up of the latter growth; and behold, it was the latter growth after the king's harvest. When they finished eating the grass of the land, then I said, " , forgive, I beg you! How could stand? For he is small." relented concerning this. "It shall not be," . Thus showed me: behold, called for by ; and it dried up the great deep, and would have devoured the land. Then I said, " , stop, I beg you! How could stand? For he is small." relented concerning this. "This also shall not be," . Thus he showed me: behold, stood beside a wall made by a , with a in his hand. said to me, ", what do you see?" I said, "A ." Then said, "Behold, I will set a in the middle of my people Israel. I will not again pass by them any more. The of will be desolate, the sanctuaries of Israel will be laid waste; and I will rise against the house of with ." Then the priest of sent to king of Israel, saying, " has conspired against you in the middle of the . The land is not able to bear all his words. For says, ' will , and Israel shall surely be led away out of his land.'" also said to , "You , go, flee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and there, but don't again any more at ; for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is a royal house!" Then answered , "I was no , neither was I a son, but I was a herdsman, and a farmer of sycamore figs; and took me from following the flock, and said to me, 'Go, to my people Israel.' Now therefore listen to word: 'You say, Don't against Israel, and don't preach against the house of .' Therefore says: 'Your wife shall be a in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall , and your land shall be divided by line; and you yourself shall in a land that is , and Israel shall surely be led away out of his land.'"
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.