World English Bible · Under Assyria
Isaiah 13
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The burden of , which the son of saw. Set up a banner on the mountain! Lift up your voice to them! Wave your hand, that they may go into the of the nobles. I have commanded my ones; yes, I have called my for my , even my proudly exulting ones. The noise of a multitude is in the mountains, as of a great people; the noise of an uproar of the kingdoms of the nations gathered together! of Armies is mustering the army for the battle. They come from a far country, from the uttermost part of , even , and the weapons of his , to destroy the whole land. , for day is at hand! It will come as from . Therefore all hands will be feeble, and everyone's will melt. They will be dismayed. Pangs and sorrows will seize them. They will be in pain like a woman in labor. They will look in amazement one at another. Their faces will be faces of flame. Behold, comes, cruel, with and ; to make the land a desolation, and to destroy its out of it. For the stars of and its constellations will not give their . The sun will be darkened in its going out, and the moon will not cause its to shine. I will punish the world for their evil, and for their . I will cause the arrogance of the proud to cease, and will humble the arrogance of the terrible. I will make people more rare than fine gold, even a person than the pure gold of . Therefore I will make tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place in of Armies' , and in the day of his . It will happen that like a hunted gazelle and like sheep that no one gathers, they will each turn to their own people, and will each flee to their own land. Everyone who is found will be thrust through. Everyone who is captured will fall . Their infants also will be dashed in pieces before their eyes. Their houses will be ransacked, and their wives raped. Behold, I will stir up the against them, who will not value silver, and as for gold, they will not delight in it. Their bows will dash the young men in pieces; and they shall have no on the fruit of the . Their eyes will not spare children. , the of kingdoms, the beauty of the ' pride, will be like when overthrew and . It will never be inhabited, neither will it be lived in from generation to generation. The will not pitch a tent there, neither will make their flocks lie down there. But wild animals of will lie there, and their houses will be full of jackals. Ostriches will there, and wild goats will frolic there. Hyenas will cry in their fortresses, and jackals in the pleasant palaces. Her time is near to come, and her days will not be prolonged.
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