King James Version · Under Assyria
Isaiah 32
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Behold, a king shall reign in , and princes shall rule in . And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great in a weary land. And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim, and the ears of them that hear shall . also of the rash shall understand knowledge, and of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly. The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful. For the vile person will speak villany, and will work , to practise , and to utter error against , to make empty the of the hungry, and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail. The instruments also of the churl are evil: he deviseth devices to destroy with lying words, even when speaketh right. But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand. Rise up, ye women that are at ease; , ye careless daughters; give ear unto my speech. Many days and years shall ye be troubled, ye careless women: for the vintage shall fail, the gathering shall not come. Tremble, ye women that are at ease; be troubled, ye careless ones: strip you, and make you , and gird upon your loins. They shall for the teats, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful . Upon the land of my people shall come up and ; yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city: Because the palaces shall be forsaken; of the city shall be left; the forts and towers shall be for dens for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks; Until be poured upon us from on high, and be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest. Then shall in , and in the fruitful field. And the work of shall be peace; and the effect of quietness and assurance for ever. And my people shall in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting places; When it shall hail, coming down on the forest; and the city shall be low in a low place. are ye that sow beside all waters, that send forth thither the feet of the ox and the ass.
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