World English Bible · Under Assyria
Isaiah 39
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At that time, the son of , king of , sent letters and a present to , for he heard that he had been sick, and had recovered. was pleased with them, and showed them the house of his precious things, the silver, the gold, the spices, and the precious oil, and all the house of his armor, and all that was found in his . There was nothing in his house, nor in all his , that didn't show them. Then the came to King , and asked him, "What did these men say? From where did they come to you?" said, "They have come from a country far from me, even from ." Then he asked, "What have they seen in your house?" answered, "They have seen all that is in my house. There is nothing among my that I have not shown them." Then said to , "Hear the word of of Armies: 'Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up until today, will be carried to . Nothing will be left,' . 'They will take away your sons who will issue from you, whom you shall , and they will be in the king of palace.'" Then said to , " word which you have spoken is good." He said moreover, "For there will be peace and truth in my days."
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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