World English Bible · Under Assyria
Isaiah 32
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Behold, a king shall reign in , and princes shall rule in . A man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the storm, as streams of water in a dry place, as the shade of a large in a weary land. The eyes of those who see will not be dim, and the ears of those who hear will listen. of the rash will understand knowledge, and of the stammerers will be ready to speak plainly. The fool will no longer be called noble, nor the scoundrel be highly respected. For the fool will speak folly, and will work , to practice profanity, and to utter error against , to make empty the of the hungry, and to cause the drink of the thirsty to fail. The ways of the scoundrel are evil. He devises plans to destroy the humble with lying words, even when speaks right. But the noble devises noble things, and he will continue in noble things. Rise up, you women who are at ease! ! You careless daughters, give ear to my speech! For days beyond a year you will be troubled, you careless women; for the vintage will fail. The harvest won't come. Tremble, you women who are at ease! Be troubled, you careless ones! Strip yourselves, make yourselves , and put on your waist. Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful . and will come up on my people's land; yes, on all the houses of joy in the joyous city. For the palace will be forsaken. The populous city will be deserted. The hill and the watchtower will be for dens , a delight for wild donkeys, a pasture of flocks, until is poured on us from on high, and becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is considered a forest. Then will in ; and will in the fruitful field. The work of will be peace, and the effect of , quietness and confidence . My people will live in a peaceful habitation, in safe dwellings, and in quiet resting places, though hail flattens the forest, and the city is leveled completely. are you who sow beside all waters, who send out the feet of the ox and the donkey.
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