King James Version · Under Assyria
Isaiah 36
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Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of king , that king of came up against all the defenced cities of Judah, and took them. And the king of sent from to unto king with a great army. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field. Then came forth unto him , ’s son, which was over the house, and the , and Joah, ’s son, the recorder. And said unto them, Say ye now to , Thus saith the great king, the king of , What confidence is this wherein thou trustest? I say, sayest thou, (but they are but words) I have and strength for war: now on whom dost thou , that thou rebellest against me? Lo, thou trustest in the of this broken reed, on ; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is king of to all that in him. But if thou say to me, We in our : is it not he, whose and whose hath taken away, and said to Judah and to , Ye shall before this ? Now therefore give pledges, I thee, to my master the king of , and I will give thee two thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them. How then wilt thou turn away the of one captain of the least of my master’s servants, and put thy on for chariots and for horsemen? And am I now come up without against this land to destroy it? said unto me, Go up against this land, and destroy it. Then said and and Joah unto , Speak, I thee, unto thy servants in the language; for we understand it: and speak not to us in the ’ language, in the ears of the people that are on the wall. But said, Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you? Then stood, and cried with a loud voice in the ’ language, and said, Hear ye the words of the great king, the king of . Thus saith the king, Let not deceive you: for he shall not be able to you. Neither let make you in , saying, will surely us: this city shall not be into the hand of the king of . not to : for thus saith the king of , Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me: and eat ye every one of his , and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern; Until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and , a land of bread and vineyards. Beware lest persuade you, saying, will us. Hath any of the gods of the nations his land out of the hand of the king of ? Where are the gods of and Arphad? where are the gods of ? and have they out of my hand? Who are they among all the gods of these lands, that have their land out of my hand, that should out of my hand? But they held their peace, and answered him not a word: for the king’s was, saying, Answer him not. Then came , the son of , that was over the household, and the , and Joah, the son of , the recorder, to with their clothes rent, and told him the words of .
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