World English Bible · Under Assyria
Hosea 9
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Don't rejoice, Israel, to jubilation like the nations; for you were to your . You love the wages of a at every grain . The and the press won't feed them, and the will fail her. They won't in land; but will return to , and they will eat food in . They won't pour out to , neither will they be pleasing to him. Their will be to them like the bread of mourners; all who eat of it will be polluted; for their bread will be for their appetite. It will not come into house. What will you do in the day of solemn , and in the day of the feast of ? For, behold, when they flee , will gather them up. will bury them. Nettles will possess their pleasant things of silver. will be in their tents. The days of visitation have come. The days of reckoning have come. Israel will consider the to be a fool, and the man who is inspired to be insane, because of the abundance of your , and because your hostility is great. A watches over with my . A fowler's snare is on all of his , and hostility in the house of his . They have deeply corrupted themselves, as in the days of . He will remember their . He will punish them for their . I found Israel like grapes in . I saw your fathers as the first ripe in the fig tree at its first season; but they came to , and themselves to the shameful thing, and became like that which they loved. As for , their will fly away like a bird. There will be no birth, no one with child, and no conception. Though they bring up their children, yet I will bereave them, so that not a man shall be left. Indeed, woe also to them when I depart from them! I have seen , like , planted in a pleasant place; but will bring out his children to the . Give them— what will you give? Give them a miscarrying and dry breasts. "All their wickedness is in ; for there I hated them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds, I will drive them out of my house! I will love them no more. All their princes are rebels. is struck. Their root has dried up. They will bear no fruit. Even though they give birth, yet I will kill the beloved ones of their ." My will cast them away, because they didn't listen to him; and they will be wanderers among the nations.
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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.