World English Bible · Under Assyria
Isaiah 11
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A shoot will come out of the stock of , and a branch out of his roots will bear fruit. will rest on him: of and , of and might, of knowledge and of the . His delight will be in the . He will not judge by the sight of his eyes, neither decide by the hearing of his ears; but he will judge with , and decide with equity for the humble of the earth. He will strike the earth with the of his ; and with the breath of his he will kill . will be the belt around his waist, and the belt around his waist. The wolf will live with , and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, the calf, the young lion, and the fattened calf together; and a little child will lead them. 7The cow and the bear will graze. Their young ones will lie down together. The lion will eat straw like the ox. The nursing child will play near a cobra's hole, and the weaned child will put his hand on the viper's den. They will not hurt nor destroy in all my mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of , as the waters cover the sea. It will happen in that day that the nations will seek the root of , who stands as a banner of the peoples; and his will be . It will happen in that day that will set his hand again the second time to recover that is left of his people from , from , from , from , from , from , from , and from the islands of the sea. He will set up a banner for the nations, and will assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. The envy also of will depart, and those who persecute Judah will . won't envy Judah, and Judah won't persecute . They will fly down on the shoulders of the on the west. Together they will plunder the children of the east. They will extend their over and , and will them. will of the sea; and with his scorching wind he will wave his hand over , and will split it into seven streams, and cause men to march over in . There will be a highway for that is left of his people from , like there was for Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of .
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.
All of Isaiah