World English Bible · Under Assyria
Isaiah 33
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Woe to you who destroy, but you weren't destroyed, and who betray, but nobody betrayed you! When you have finished destroying, you will be destroyed; and when you have finished betrayal, you will be betrayed. , be to us. We have waited for you. Be our strength every morning, our also in the time of trouble. At the noise of the thunder, the peoples have fled. When you lift yourself up, the nations are scattered. Your plunder will be gathered as the caterpillar gathers. Men will leap on it as leap. is exalted, for he dwells on high. He has filled with and . There will be stability in your times, abundance of , , and knowledge. The is your . Behold, their valiant ones cry outside; the ambassadors of peace weep bitterly. The highways are desolate. The traveling man ceases. is broken. He has despised the cities. He doesn't respect man. The land mourns and languishes. is confounded and withers away. Sharon is like a , and and are stripped . "Now I will arise," . "Now I will lift myself up. Now I will be exalted. You will conceive . You will give birth to stubble. Your breath is a that will devour you. The peoples will be like the burning of lime, like that are cut down and burned in the . Hear, you who are far off, what I have done; and, you who are near, my might." The in are afraid. Trembling has seized the godless ones. Who among us can live with the devouring ? Who among us can live with burning? He who walks righteously and speaks blamelessly, he who despises the gain of oppressions, who gestures with his hands, refusing to take a bribe, who stops his ears from hearing of , and shuts his eyes from looking at evil— he will on high. His place of defense will be the of rocks. His bread will be supplied. His waters will be sure. Your eyes will see the king in his beauty. They will see a distant land. will on the terror. Where is he who counted? Where is he who weighed? Where is he who counted the towers? You will no longer see the fierce people, a people of a deep speech that you can't comprehend, with a strange language that you can't understand. Look at , the city of our appointed festivals. Your eyes will see , a quiet habitation, a tent that won't be removed. Its stakes will never be plucked up, nor will any of its cords be broken. But there will be with us in majesty, a place of wide rivers and streams, in which no galley with oars will go, neither will any gallant ship pass by there. For is our judge. is our lawgiver. is our king. He will us. Your rigging is untied. They couldn't strengthen the foot of their mast. They couldn't spread the sail. Then the prey of a great plunder was divided. The lame took the prey. The inhabitant won't say, "I am sick." The people who therein will be forgiven their .
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