King James Version · Under Assyria
Isaiah 13
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
The burden of , which the son of did see. Lift ye up a banner upon the high mountain, exalt the voice unto them, shake the hand, that they may go into the of the nobles. I have commanded my ones, I have also called my mighty ones for mine , even them that rejoice in my highness. The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like as of a great people; a tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together: of hosts mustereth the host of the battle. They come from a far country, from the end of , even , and the weapons of his , to destroy the whole land. Howl ye; for is at hand; it shall come as a from . Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man’s shall melt: And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames. Behold, cometh, cruel both with and , to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the thereof out of it. For the stars of and the constellations thereof shall not give their : the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her to shine. And I will punish the world for their evil, and for their ; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of . Therefore I will shake , and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the of of hosts, and in the day of his . And it shall be as the chased roe, and as a sheep that no man taketh up: they shall every man turn to his own people, and flee every one into his own land. Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall . Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished. Behold, I will stir up the against them, which shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it. Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no on the fruit of the ; their eye shall not spare children. And , the of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency, shall be as when overthrew and . It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the pitch tent there; neither shall the make their fold there. But wild of shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. 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