King James Version · Under Assyria
Hosea 1
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The word of that came unto , the son of , in the days of , , , and , kings of Judah, and in the days of the son of , king of Israel. The beginning of the word of by . And said to , Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from . So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; which conceived, and him a son. And said unto him, Call his name ; for yet a little while, and I will of upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease of the . And it shall come to pass at that day, that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of . And she conceived again, and a daughter. And said unto him, Call her name Lo–ruhamah: for I will no more have mercy upon the ; but I will utterly take them away. But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will them by their , and will not them by bow, nor by , nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen. 8Now when she had weaned Lo–ruhamah, she conceived, and a son. Then said , Call his name Lo–ammi: for ye are not my people, and I will not be your . Yet the number of the shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living . Then shall the children of Judah and the be gathered together, and appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land: for great shall be the day of .
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.