King James Version · Under Assyria
Isaiah 23
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The burden of . Howl, ye ships of ; for it is laid waste, so that there is no house, no entering in: from the land of it is to them. Be still, ye inhabitants of the isle; thou whom the merchants of Zidon, that pass over the sea, have replenished. And by great waters the of Sihor, the harvest of the river, is her revenue; and she is a mart of nations. Be thou , O Zidon: for the sea hath spoken, even the strength of the sea, saying, I travail not, nor bring forth children, neither do I nourish up young men, nor bring up virgins. As at the report concerning , so shall they be sorely pained at the report of . Pass ye over to ; howl, ye inhabitants of the isle. Is this your joyous city, whose antiquity is of ancient days? her own feet shall carry her afar off to sojourn. Who hath taken this against , the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth? of hosts hath purposed it, to stain the pride of all , and to bring into contempt all the honourable of the earth. Pass through thy land as a river, O daughter of : there is no more strength. He stretched out his hand over the sea, he shook the kingdoms: hath given a against the merchant city, to destroy the strong holds thereof. And he said, Thou shalt no more rejoice, O thou oppressed virgin, daughter of Zidon: arise, pass over to ; there also shalt thou have no rest. Behold the land of the ; this people was not, till the founded it for them that in : they set up the towers thereof, they up the palaces thereof; and he brought it to . Howl, ye ships of : for your strength is laid waste. And it shall come to pass in that day, that shall be forgotten seventy years, according to the days of one king: after the end of seventy years shall sing as an . Take an harp, go about the city, thou that hast been forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that thou mayest be remembered. And it shall come to pass after the end of seventy years, that will visit , and she shall turn to her hire, and shall commit fornication with all the kingdoms of the world upon the of the earth. And her merchandise and her hire shall be to : it shall not be treasured nor laid up; for her merchandise shall be for them that before , to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing.
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