World English Bible · Under Assyria
Hosea 4
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Hear word, you , for has a charge against the inhabitants of the land: "Indeed there is no truth, nor goodness, nor knowledge of in the land. There is , lying, , stealing, and committing ; they break boundaries, and bloodshed causes bloodshed. Therefore the land will mourn, and everyone who dwells in it will waste away, with all living things in her, even the animals of the field and the birds of ; yes, the fish of the sea also . "Yet let no man bring a charge, neither let any man accuse; for your people are like those who bring charges against a priest. You will stumble in the day, and the will also stumble with you in the night; and I will destroy your mother. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you, that you may be no priest to me. Because you have forgotten your , I will also forget your children. As they were multiplied, so they against me. I will change their into . They feed on the of my people, and set their on their . It will be like people, like priest; and I will punish them for their ways, and will repay them for their deeds. They will eat, and not have enough. They will play the , and will not increase; because they have abandoned listening to . Prostitution, , and take away understanding. My people consult with their wooden idol, and answer to a stick of wood. Indeed of prostitution has led them astray, and they have been to their . They on the tops of the mountains, and on the hills, under oaks, poplars, and terebinths, because its shade is good. Therefore your daughters play the , and your brides . I will not punish your daughters when they play the , nor your brides when they ; because the men consort with , and they with the shrine ; so the people without understanding will come to . "Though you, Israel, play the , yet don't let Judah offend; and don't come to , neither go up to Beth , nor , 'As lives.' For Israel has behaved extremely stubbornly, like a heifer. Then how will feed them like in a meadow? is joined to idols. Leave him alone! Their drink has become sour. They play the continually. Her dearly love their shameful way. The wind has wrapped her up in its ; and they shall be disappointed because of their .
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. 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.