World English Bible · Under Assyria
Isaiah 38
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In those days was sick and near . the , the son of , came to him, and said to him, " says, 'Set your house in order, for you will , and not live.'" Then turned to the wall and to , and said, "Remember now, , I beg you, how I have walked before you in truth and with a perfect , and have done that which is good in your sight." Then wept bitterly. 4Then word came to , saying, "Go, and tell , ', the of your , says, "I have heard your . I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add fifteen years to your life. I will you and this city out of the hand of the king of , and I will defend this city. This shall be the sign to you from , that will do this thing that he has spoken. Behold, I will cause the shadow on the sundial, which has gone down on the sundial of with the sun, to return backward ten steps."'" So the sun returned ten steps on the sundial on which it had gone down. The writing of king of Judah, when he had been sick, and had recovered of his sickness: I said, "In the middle of my life I go into the of . I am deprived of the residue of my years." I said, "I won't see , in the land of the living. I will see man no more with the inhabitants of the world. My dwelling is removed, and is from me like a tent. I have rolled up my life like a weaver. He will cut me off from the loom. From day even to night you will make an end of me. I waited patiently until morning. He breaks all my bones like a lion. From day even to night you will make an end of me. I chattered like a swallow or a crane. I moaned like a . My eyes weaken looking upward. , I am oppressed. Be my security." What will I say? He has both spoken to me, and himself has done it. I will walk carefully all my years because of the anguish of . , men live by these things; and finds life in all of them. You restore me, and cause me to live. Behold, for peace I had great anguish, but you have in love for it from of corruption; for you have cast all my behind your back. For can't you. can't celebrate you. Those who go down into can't for your truth. The living, the living, he shall you, as I do today. shall make known your truth to the children. will me. Therefore we will sing my songs with stringed instruments all the days of our life in house. Now had said, "Let them take a cake of figs, and lay it for a poultice on the boil, and he shall recover." also had said, "What is the sign that I will go up to house?"
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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