King James Version · Under Assyria
Hosea 13
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When spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended in , he . And now they more and more, and have made them of their silver, and idols according to their own understanding, all of it the work of the craftsmen: they say of them, Let the men that kiss the calves. Therefore they shall be as the morning cloud, and as the early that passeth away, as the that is driven with the whirlwind out of the floor, and as the smoke out of the chimney. Yet I am thy from the land of , and thou shalt know no but me: for there is no beside me. I did know thee in , in the land of great . According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and their was exalted; therefore have they forgotten me. Therefore I will be unto them as a lion: as a leopard by will I observe them: I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend the caul of their , and there will I devour them like a lion: shall tear them. O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help. I will be thy king: where is any other that may thee in all thy cities? and thy judges of whom thou saidst, Give me a king and princes? I gave thee a king in mine , and took him away in my . The of is bound up; his is hid. The sorrows of a travailing woman shall come upon him: he is an unwise son; for he should not stay long in the place of the breaking forth of children. I will them from the of the ; I will them from : O , I will be thy plagues; O , I will be thy : shall be hid from mine eyes. Though he be fruitful among his brethren, an east wind shall come, the wind of shall come up from , and his spring shall become dry, and his fountain shall be dried up: he shall spoil the of all pleasant vessels. shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her : they shall fall : their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.
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.