King James Version · Under Assyria
Isaiah 17
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 . Behold, is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap. The cities of are forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid. The also shall cease from , and from , and of : they shall be as the of the , saith of hosts. And in that day it shall come to pass, that the of shall be made thin, and the fatness of his shall wax lean. And it shall be as when the harvestman gathereth the corn, and reapeth the ears with his arm; and it shall be as he that gathereth ears in the valley of . Yet grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful thereof, saith of Israel. At that day shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the One of Israel. And he shall not look to the , the work of his hands, neither shall respect that which his fingers have made, either the groves, or the . In that day shall his strong cities be as a forsaken bough, and an uppermost branch, which they left because of the : and there shall be desolation. Because thou hast forgotten the of thy , and hast not been mindful of of thy strength, therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips: In the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make thy to flourish: but the harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow. Woe to of many people, which make a noise like the noise of the seas; and to the rushing of nations, that make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters! shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind. And behold at eveningtide trouble; and before the morning he is not. This is the of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us.
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