World English Bible · Under Assyria
Hosea 7
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When I would heal Israel, then the of is uncovered, also the wickedness of ; for they commit falsehood, and the thief enters in, and the gang of robbers ravages outside. They don't consider in their that I remember all their wickedness. Now their own deeds have engulfed them. They are before . They make the king glad with their wickedness, and the princes with their lies. They are all . They are burning like an oven that the baker stops stirring, from the kneading of the dough, until it is leavened. On the day of our king, the princes made themselves sick with the heat of . He joined his hand with mockers. For they have prepared their like an oven, while they lie in wait. Their smolders all night. In the morning it burns as a flaming . They are all hot as an oven, and devour their judges. All their kings have fallen. There is no one among them who calls to me. mixes himself among the nations. is a pancake not turned over. Strangers have devoured his strength, and he doesn't realize it. Indeed, gray hairs are here and there on him, and he doesn't realize it. The pride of Israel testifies to ; yet they haven't returned to their , nor sought him, for all this. " is like an easily deceived , without understanding. They call to . They go to . When they go, I will spread my net on them. I will bring them down like the birds of . I will them, as their has heard. Woe to them! For they have wandered from me. to them! For they have trespassed against me. Though I would them, yet they have spoken lies against me. They haven't cried to me with their , but they howl on their beds. They assemble themselves for grain and . They turn away from me. Though I have taught and strengthened their arms, yet they plot evil against me. They return, but not to . They are like a faulty bow. Their princes will fall for the rage of their . This will be their derision in the land of .
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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.