World English Bible · Under Assyria
Hosea 13
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When spoke, there was trembling. He exalted himself in Israel, but when he became guilty through , he . Now they more and more, and have made themselves of their silver, even idols according to their own understanding, all of them the work of the craftsmen. They say of them, 'They offer human and kiss the calves.' Therefore they will be like the morning mist, like the that passes away early, like the that is driven with the whirlwind out of the , and like the smoke out of the chimney. "Yet I am your from the land of ; and you shall no but me, and besides me there is no . I knew you in , in the land of great . According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and their was exalted. Therefore they have forgotten me. Therefore I am like a lion to them. Like a leopard, I will lurk by . I will meet them like a bear that is bereaved of her cubs, and will tear the covering of their . There I will devour them like a lioness. The wild animal will tear them. You are destroyed, Israel, because you are against me, against your helper. Where is your king now, that he may you in all your cities? And your judges, of whom you said, 'Give me a king and princes'? I have given you a king in my , and have taken him away in my . The of is stored up. His is stored up. The sorrows of a travailing woman will come on him. He is an unwise son, for when it is time, he doesn't come to the opening of the . I will them from the of . I will them from ! , where are your plagues? , where is your ? " will be hidden from my eyes. Though he is fruitful among his brothers, an east wind will come, the breath of coming up from ; and his spring will become dry, and his fountain will be dried up. He will plunder the of . will bear her , for she has rebelled against her . They will fall . Their infants will be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women will be ripped open."
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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.