World English Bible · Under Assyria
Hosea 11
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"When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of . They called to them, so they went from them. They to , and to engraved . Yet I taught to walk. I took them by their arms, but they didn't know that I healed them. I drew them with cords of a man, with ties of love; and I was to them like those who lift up the on their necks; and I bent down to him and I fed him. "They won't return into the land of ; but the will be their king, because they refused to . will fall on their cities, and will destroy the bars of their , and will put an end to their plans. My people are determined to turn from me. Though they call to , he certainly won't exalt them. "How can I give you up, ? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? is turned within me, my is aroused. I will not execute the fierceness of my . I will not return to destroy , for I am , and not man—the One among you. I will not come in . They will walk after , who will roar like a lion; for he will roar, and the children will come trembling from the west. They will come trembling like a bird out of , and like a out of the land of ; and I will settle them in their houses," . surrounds me with falsehood, and the with deceit. Judah still strays from , and is to the One.
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.