King James Version · Under Assyria
Hosea 2
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Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ru–hamah. Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts; Lest I strip her , and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a , and set her like a dry land, and her with thirst. And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they be the children of whoredoms. For their mother hath played the : she that conceived them hath done shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink. Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with , and make a wall, that she shall not find her . And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them: then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now. For she did not know that I gave her corn, and , and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for . Therefore will I return, and take away my corn in the time thereof, and my in the season thereof, and will recover my wool and my flax given to cover her . And now will I discover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and none shall her out of mine hand. I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her , and all her solemn feasts. And I will destroy her and her fig trees, whereof she hath said, These are my rewards that my lovers have given me: and I will make them a forest, and the of the field shall eat them. And I will visit upon her the days of , wherein she to them, and she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and she went after her lovers, and forgat me, saith . Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into , and speak comfortably unto her. And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of : and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of . And it shall be at that day, saith , that thou shalt call me ; and shalt call me no more Baali. For I will take away the names of out of her , and they shall no more be remembered by their name. And in that day will I make a for them with the of the field, and with the fowls of , and with the creeping things of the ground: and I will break the bow and and the battle out of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely. And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in , and in , and in , and in . I will even betroth thee unto me in : and thou shalt know . And it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith , I will hear , and they shall hear the earth; And the earth shall hear the corn, and the , and the oil; and they shall hear . And I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them which were not my people, Thou art my people; and they shall say, Thou art my .
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.