World English Bible · Under Assyria
Isaiah 35
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and the dry land will be glad. will rejoice and blossom like a rose. It will blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing. will be given to it, the excellence of and Sharon. They will see , the excellence of our . Strengthen the weak hands, and make the feeble knees firm. Tell those who have a fearful , "Be strong! Don't be afraid! Behold, your will come with , retribution. He will come and you. Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame man will leap like a deer, and of the mute will sing; for waters will break out in , and streams in . The burning sand will become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water. Grass with reeds and rushes will be in the habitation of jackals, where they lay. A highway will be there, a road, and it will be called "The Way". The shall not pass over it, but it will be for those who walk in . fools shall not go there. No lion will be there, nor will any ravenous animal go up on it. They will not be found there; but the will walk there. Then ransomed ones will return, and come with singing to ; and joy will be on their heads. They will obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing will flee away."
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