King James Version · Under Assyria
Isaiah 31
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Woe to them that go down to for help; and stay on horses, and in chariots, because they are many; and in horsemen, because they are very strong; but they look not unto the One of Israel, neither seek ! Yet he also is , and will bring evil, and will not call back his words: but will arise against the house of the , and against the help of them that work . Now the are men, and not ; and their horses , and not . When shall stretch out his hand, both he that helpeth shall fall, and he that is holpen shall fall down, and they all shall fail together. For thus hath spoken unto me, Like as the lion and the young lion roaring on his prey, when a multitude of is called forth against him, he will not be afraid of their voice, nor abase himself for the noise of them: so shall of hosts come down to fight for mount , and for the hill thereof. As birds flying, so will of hosts defend ; defending also he will it; and passing over he will preserve it. Turn ye unto him from whom the have deeply revolted. For in that day every man shall cast away his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which your own hands have made unto you for a . Then shall the fall with , not of a mighty man; and , not of a mean man, shall devour him: but he shall flee from , and his young men shall be discomfited. And he shall pass over to his strong hold for fear, and his princes shall be afraid of the ensign, saith , whose is in , and his furnace in .
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