King James Version · Under Assyria
Isaiah 22
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The burden of the valley of . What aileth thee now, that thou art wholly gone up to the housetops? Thou that art full of stirs, a tumultuous city, a joyous city: thy slain men are not slain with , nor in battle. All thy are fled together, they are bound by the archers: all that are found in thee are bound together, which have fled from far. Therefore said I, Look away from me; I will weep bitterly, labour not to comfort me, because of the spoiling of the daughter of my people. For it is a day of trouble, and of treading down, and of perplexity by of hosts in the valley of , breaking down the walls, and of crying to the mountains. And the quiver with chariots of men and horsemen, and uncovered the shield. And it shall come to pass, that thy choicest valleys shall be full of chariots, and the horsemen shall set themselves in array at the . And he discovered the covering of Judah, and thou didst look in that day to the armour of the house of the forest. Ye have seen also the breaches of , that they are many: and ye gathered together the waters of the lower pool. 10And ye have numbered the houses of , and the houses have ye broken down to fortify the wall. Ye made also a ditch between the two walls for the water of the old pool: but ye have not looked unto the maker thereof, neither had respect unto him that fashioned it long ago. And in that day did of hosts call to weeping, and to , and to baldness, and to girding with : And behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating , and drinking : let us eat and drink; for to morrow we shall . And it was in mine ears by of hosts, Surely this shall not be purged from you till ye , saith of hosts. Thus saith of hosts, Go, get thee unto this treasurer, even unto , which is over the house, and say, What hast thou here? and whom hast thou here, that thou hast hewed thee out a here, as he that heweth him out a on high, and that graveth an habitation for himself in a ? Behold, will carry thee away with a mighty , and will surely cover thee. He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a ball into a large country: there shalt thou , and there the chariots of thy shall be the of thy ’s house. And I will drive thee from thy station, and from thy state shall he pull thee down. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will call my servant the son of : And I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand: and he shall be a to the inhabitants of , and to the house of Judah. And the key of the house of will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a to his ’s house. And they shall hang upon him all the of his ’s house, the and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of , even to all the vessels of flagons. In that day, saith of hosts, shall the nail that is fastened in the sure place be removed, and be cut down, and fall; and the burden that was upon it : for hath spoken it.
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