King James Version · Under Assyria
Isaiah 5
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Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his . My wellbeloved hath a in a very fruitful hill: And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest , and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of , and men of Judah, judge, I you, betwixt me and my . What could have been done more to my , that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my : I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down: And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up and : I will also command the clouds that they no upon it. For the of of hosts is the , and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for , but behold ; for , but behold a cry. Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth! In mine ears said of hosts, Of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant. Yea, ten acres of shall yield one bath, and the of an homer shall yield an ephah. Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow ; that continue until night, till inflame them! And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and , are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of , neither consider the operation of his hands. Therefore my people are gone into , because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst. Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her without measure: and their , and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it. And the mean man shall be brought down, and the mighty man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled: But of hosts shall be exalted in , and that is shall be in . Then shall the lambs feed after their manner, and the waste places of ones shall strangers eat. Woe unto them that draw with cords of , and as it were with a cart rope: That say, Let him make speed, and hasten his work, that we may see it: and let the of the One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it! Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put for , and for ; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Woe unto them that are mighty to drink , and men of strength to mingle : Which for reward, and take away the of from him! Therefore as the devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the , so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as : because they have cast away of of hosts, and despised the word of the One of Israel. Therefore is the of kindled against his people, and he hath stretched forth his hand against them, and hath smitten them: and the hills did tremble, and their carcases were torn in the midst of the streets. For all this his is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. And he will lift up an ensign to the nations from far, and will hiss unto them from the end of the earth: and, behold, they shall come with speed swiftly: None shall be weary nor stumble among them; none shall slumber nor sleep; neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed, nor the latchet of their be broken: Whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent, their horses’ hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind: Their roaring shall be like a lion, they shall roar like young lions: yea, they shall roar, and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and none shall it. And in that day they shall roar against them like the roaring of the sea: and if one look unto the land, behold and sorrow, and is darkened in thereof.
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