World English Bible · Under Assyria
Isaiah 16
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Send the lambs for the ruler of the land from to , to the mountain of the daughter of . For it will be that as wandering birds, as a scattered nest, so will the daughters of be at the fords of the . Give ! ! Make your shade like the night in the middle of the noonday! Hide the outcasts! Don't betray the fugitive! Let my outcasts with you! As for , be a hiding place for him from the of . For the extortionist is brought to nothing. ceases. The oppressors are consumed out of the land. A will be established in . One will sit on it in truth, in the tent of , judging, seeking , and swift to do . We have heard of the pride of , that he is very proud; even of his arrogance, his pride, and his . His boastings are nothing. Therefore will for . Everyone will . You will mourn for the raisin cakes of , utterly stricken. For the fields of languish with of . The lords of the nations have broken down its choice , which reached even to , which wandered into . Its shoots were spread abroad. They passed over the sea. Therefore I will weep with the weeping of for of . I will water you with my tears, , and : for on your summer fruits and on your harvest the battle shout has fallen. Gladness is taken away, and joy out of the fruitful field; and in the vineyards there will be no singing, neither joyful noise. Nobody will tread out in the presses. I have made the shouting stop. Therefore sounds like a harp for , and my inward parts for Heres. It will happen that when presents himself, when he wearies himself on the , and comes to his sanctuary to , that he will not prevail. This is the word that spoke concerning in time past. But now has spoken, saying, "Within three years, as a worker bound by contract would count them, the of shall be brought into contempt, with all his great multitude; and will be very small and feeble."
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