King James Version · Under Assyria
Amos 9
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I saw standing upon the : and he said, Smite the lintel of the door, that the posts may shake: and cut them in the head, all of them; and I will the last of them with : he that fleeth of them shall not flee away, and he that escapeth of them shall not be . Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to , thence will I bring them down: And though they hide themselves in the top of , I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command , and he shall bite them: And though they go into before their , thence will I command , and it shall them: and I will set mine eyes upon them for evil, and not for good. And of hosts is he that toucheth the land, and it shall melt, and all that therein shall mourn: and it shall rise up wholly like a flood; and shall be drowned, as by the flood of . It is he that buildeth his stories in the , and hath founded his troop in the earth; he that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the of the earth: is his name. Are ye not as children of the unto me, O ? saith . Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of ? and the from Caphtor, and from ? Behold, the eyes of are upon the kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the of the earth; saving that I will not the house of , saith . For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth. All the of my people shall , which say, The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us. In that day will I raise up the of that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old: That they may possess of , and of all the heathen, which are called by my name, saith that doeth this. Behold, the days come, saith , that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth ; and the mountains shall drop sweet , and all the hills shall melt. And I will bring again of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith thy .
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.