World English Bible · Under Assyria
Hosea 12
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feeds on wind, and chases the east wind. He continually multiplies lies and desolation. They make a with , and oil is carried into . also has a controversy with Judah, and will punish according to his ways; according to his deeds he will repay him. In the he took his brother by the heel, and in his manhood he contended with . Indeed, he struggled with , and prevailed; he wept, and made to him. He found him at , and there he spoke with us— even , the of Armies. is his name of renown! Therefore turn to your . Keep kindness and justice, and wait continually for your . A merchant has dishonest scales in his hand. He loves to defraud. said, "Surely I have become rich. I have found myself wealth. In all my wealth they won't find in me any that is ." "But I am your from the land of . I will yet again make you in tents, as in the days of the solemn feast. I have also spoken to , and I have multiplied ; and by the ministry of I have used parables. If is , surely they are worthless. In they bulls. Indeed, their are like heaps in the furrows of the field. fled into the country of . Israel to get a wife. For a wife he tended flocks and herds. By a brought Israel up out of , and by a he was preserved. has bitterly provoked . Therefore his will be left on him, and his will repay his contempt.
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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.