World English Bible · Under Assyria
Isaiah 36
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Now in the fourteenth year of King , king of attacked all of the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. The king of sent from to to King with a large army. He stood by the aqueduct from the upper pool in the fuller's field highway. Then the son of , who was over the household, and the , and Joah, the son of the recorder came out to him. said to them, "Now tell , 'The great king, the king of , says, "What confidence is this in which you ? I say that your and strength for the war are only words. Now in whom do you , that you have rebelled against me? Behold, you in the of this bruised reed, even in , which if a man leans on it, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is king of to all who in him. But if you tell me, 'We in our ,' isn't that he whose and whose has taken away, and has said to Judah and to , 'You shall before this '?" Now therefore, please make a pledge to my master the king of , and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them. How then can you turn away the of one captain of the least of my master's servants, and put your in for chariots and for horsemen? Have I come up now without against this land to destroy it? said to me, "Go up against this land, and destroy it."'" Then , and Joah said to , "Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Don't speak to us in the ' language in the hearing of the people who are on the wall." But said, "Has my master sent me only to your master and to you, to speak these words, and not to the men who sit on the wall, who will eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?" Then stood, and called out with a loud voice in the ' language, and said, "Hear the words of the great king, the king of ! The king says, 'Don't let deceive you; for he will not be able to you. Don't let make you in , saying, " will surely us. This city won't be given into the hand of the king of ."' Don't listen to , for the king of says, 'Make your peace with me, and come out to me; and each of you eat from his , and each one from his fig tree, and each one of you drink the waters of his own cistern; until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and , a land of bread and vineyards. Beware lest persuade you, saying, " will us." Have any of the gods of the nations their lands from the hand of the king of ? Where are the gods of and ? Where are the gods of ? Have they from my hand? Who are they among all the gods of these countries that have their country out of my hand, that should out of my hand?'" But they remained silent, and said nothing in reply, for the king's was, "Don't answer him." Then the son of , who was over the household, and the , and Joah, the son of the recorder, came to with their clothes torn, and told him the words of .
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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