World English Bible · Under Assyria
Isaiah 31
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Woe to those who go down to for help, and rely on horses, and in chariots because they are many, and in horsemen because they are very strong, but they don't look to the One of Israel, and they don't seek ! Yet he also is , and will bring disaster, and will not call back his words, but will arise against the house of the , and against the help of those who work . Now the are men, and not ; and their horses , and not . When stretches out his hand, both he who helps shall stumble, and he who is helped shall fall, and they all shall be consumed together. For says to me, "As the lion and the young lion growling over his prey, if a multitude of is called together against him, will not be dismayed at their voice, nor abase himself for their noise, so of Armies will come down to fight on Mount and on its heights. As birds hovering, so of Armies will protect . He will protect and it. He will pass over and preserve it." Return to him from whom you have deeply revolted, . For in that day everyone shall cast away his idols of silver and his idols of gold— which your own hands have made for you. "The will fall , not of man; and , not of mankind, shall devour him. He will flee from , and his young men will become subject to forced labor. His will pass away by reason of terror, and his princes will be afraid of the banner," , whose is in , and his furnace in .
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. 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