King James Version · Under Assyria
Isaiah 29
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Woe to , to , the city where dwelt! add ye year to year; let them kill . Yet I will distress , and there shall be heaviness and sorrow: and it shall be unto me as . And I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against thee. And thou shalt be brought down, and shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of , and thy voice shall be, as of one that hath a familiar , out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of . Moreover of thy strangers shall be like small , and of the terrible ones shall be as that passeth away: yea, it shall be at an instant suddenly. Thou shalt be visited of of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring . And of all the nations that fight against , even all that fight against her and her munition, and that distress her, shall be as a of a night . It shall even be as when an hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his is empty: or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his hath appetite: so shall of all the nations be, that fight against mount . Stay yourselves, and wonder; cry ye out, and cry: they are drunken, but not with ; they stagger, but not with . For hath poured out upon you of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes: and your , the hath he covered. And the of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed: And the book is to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I thee: and he saith, I am not learned. Wherefore said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their , and with their do me, but have removed their far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men: Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: for the of their men shall , and the of their prudent men shall be hid. Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their from , and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us? Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the ’s : for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no ? Is it not yet a very little while, and shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field shall be esteemed as a forest? And in that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity, and out of . The meek also shall increase their joy in , and among men shall rejoice in the One of Israel. For the terrible one is brought to nought, and the scorner is consumed, and all that watch for are : That make a man an offender for a word, and lay a snare for him that reproveth in the , and turn aside the for a thing of nought. Therefore thus saith , who , concerning the house of , shall not now be , neither shall now wax pale. But when he seeth his children, the work of mine hands, in the midst of him, they shall my name, and the One of , and shall fear the of Israel. They also that erred in shall come to , and they that murmured shall learn doctrine.
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