King James Version · Under Assyria
Isaiah 19
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The burden of . Behold, rideth upon a swift cloud, and shall come into : and the idols of shall be moved at his , and of shall melt in the midst of it. And I will set the against the : and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbour; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom. And of shall fail in the midst thereof; and I will destroy the thereof: and they shall seek to the idols, and to the charmers, and to them that have familiar spirits, and to the wizards. And the will I give over into the hand of a cruel ; and a fierce king shall them, saith , of hosts. And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and dried up. And they shall turn the rivers far away; and the brooks of defence shall be emptied and dried up: the reeds and flags shall wither. The paper reeds by the brooks, the brooks, and every thing sown by the brooks, shall wither, be driven away, and be no more. The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle into the brooks shall , and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish. Moreover they that work in fine flax, and they that weave networks, shall be confounded. And they shall be broken in the purposes thereof, all that make sluices and ponds for fish. Surely the princes of are fools, the of counsellors of is become brutish: how say ye unto , I am the son of , the son of ancient kings? Where are they? where are thy men? and let them tell thee now, and let them know what of hosts hath purposed upon . The princes of are become fools, the princes of are deceived; they have also seduced , even they that are the stay of the tribes thereof. hath mingled a perverse in the midst thereof: and they have caused to err in every work thereof, as a drunken man staggereth in his vomit. Neither shall there be any work for , which the head or tail, branch or rush, may do. In that day shall be like unto women: and it shall be afraid and fear because of the shaking of the hand of of hosts, which he shaketh over it. And the land of Judah shall be a terror unto , every one that maketh mention thereof shall be afraid in himself, because of of hosts, which he hath determined against it. In that day shall five cities in the land of speak the language of , and to of hosts; one shall be called, The city of . In that day shall there be an to in the midst of the land of , and a pillar at the border thereof to . And it shall be for a sign and for a unto of hosts in the land of : for they shall cry unto because of the oppressors, and he shall send them a , and a great one, and he shall them. And shall be known to , and the shall know in that day, and shall do and oblation; yea, they shall a unto , and perform it. And shall smite : he shall smite and heal it: and they shall return even to , and he shall be intreated of them, and shall heal them. In that day shall there be a highway out of to , and the shall come into , and the into , and the shall with the . In that day shall Israel be the third with and with , even a in the midst of the land: Whom of hosts shall , saying, be my people, and the work of my hands, and Israel mine .
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