King James Version · Under Assyria
Hosea 11
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When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of . As they called them, so they went from them: they unto , and to graven . I taught also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them. I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love: and I was to them as they that take off the on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them. He shall not return into the land of , but the shall be his king, because they refused to return. And shall on his cities, and shall consume his , and devour them, because of their own counsels. And my people are bent to backsliding from me: though they called them to , none at all would exalt him. How shall I give thee up, ? how shall I thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of mine , I will not return to destroy : for I am , and not man; the One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city. They shall walk after : he shall roar like a lion: when he shall roar, then the children shall tremble from the west. They shall tremble as a bird out of , and as a out of the land of : and I will place them in their houses, saith . compasseth me about with lies, and the with deceit: but Judah yet ruleth with , and is with .
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.