World English Bible · Under Assyria
Amos 9
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere. The ✦ marks a verse the New Testament takes up.
I saw standing beside the , and he said, "Strike the tops of the pillars, that the thresholds may shake. Break them in pieces on the head of all of them. I will kill the last of them with . Not one of them will flee away. Not one of them will escape. Though they dig into , there my hand will take them; and though they climb up to , there I will bring them down. Though they hide themselves in the top of , I will search and take them out from there; and though they be hidden from my sight in the bottom of the sea, there I will command , and it will bite them. Though they go into before their , there I will command , and it will kill them. I will set my eyes on them for evil, and not for good. For , the of Armies, is he who touches the land and it melts, and all who in it will mourn; and it will rise up wholly like , and will sink again, like of . It is he who builds his rooms in , and has founded his vault on the earth; he who calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out on the surface of the earth— is his name. Are you not like the children of the to me, ?" . "Haven't I brought up Israel out of the land of , and the from Caphtor, and from ? Behold, the eyes of are on the kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the surface of the earth, except that I will not the house of ," . "For behold, I will command, and I will sift the among all the nations as grain is sifted in a sieve, yet not the least kernel will fall on the earth. All the of my people will , who say, 'Evil won't overtake nor meet us.' In that day I will raise up the tent of who is fallen and close up its breaches, and I will raise up its ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old, that they may possess of and all the nations who are called by my name," who does this. "Behold, the days come," , "that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the one treading grapes him who sows ; and sweet will drip from the mountains, and flow from the hills. I will bring my people Israel back from , and they will rebuild the ruined cities, and inhabit them; and they will plant vineyards, and drink from them. They shall also make gardens, and eat their fruit. I will plant them on their land, and they will no more be plucked up out of their land which I have given them," your .
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.