World English Bible · Under Assyria
Hosea 5
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"Listen to this, you priests! Listen, , and give ear, house of the king! For the is against you; for you have been a snare at , and a net spread on . The rebels are deep in slaughter, but I all of them. I know , and Israel is not hidden from me; for now, , you have . Israel is defiled. Their deeds won't allow them to turn to their , for of prostitution is within them, and they don't know . The pride of Israel testifies to . Therefore Israel and will stumble in their . Judah also will stumble with them. They will go with their flocks and with their herds to seek , but they won't find him. He has withdrawn himself from them. They are to ; for they have borne illegitimate children. Now the will devour them with their fields. "Blow the cornet in , and the in ! Sound a battle cry at Beth , behind you, ! will become a desolation in the day of rebuke. Among the tribes of Israel, I have that which will surely be. The princes of Judah are like those who remove a landmark. I will pour out my on them like water. is oppressed, he is crushed in , because he is intent in his pursuit of idols. Therefore I am to like a moth, and to the house of Judah like rottenness. "When saw his sickness, and Judah his wound, then went to , and sent to King Jareb: but he is not able to heal you, neither will he cure you of your wound. For I will be to like a lion, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I myself will tear in pieces and go away. I will carry off, and there will be no one to . I will go and return to my place, until they their offense, and . In their affliction they will seek me earnestly."
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.