World English Bible · Under Assyria
Isaiah 5
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Let me sing for my well beloved a song of my beloved about his . My beloved had a on a very fruitful hill. He dug it up, gathered out its stones, planted it with the choicest , built a tower in the middle of it, and also cut out a press in it. He looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. "Now, inhabitants of and men of Judah, please judge between me and my . What could have been done more to my , that I have not done in it? Why, when I looked for it to yield grapes, did it yield wild grapes? Now I will tell you what I will do to my . I will take away its hedge, and it will be eaten up. I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled down. I will lay it a wasteland. It won't be pruned or hoed, but it will grow and . I will also command the clouds that they no on it." For the of of Armies is the , and the men of Judah his pleasant plant. He looked for , but behold, , for , but behold, a cry of distress. Woe to those who join house to house, who lay field to field, until there is no room, and you are made to alone in the middle of the land! In my ears, of Armies says: "Surely many houses will be desolate, even great and beautiful, unoccupied. For ten acres of shall yield one bath, and a homer of shall yield an ephah." Woe to those who rise up early in the morning, that they may follow , who stay late into the night, until inflames them! The harp, lyre, tambourine, and flute, with , are at their feasts; but they don't respect the work of , neither have they considered the operation of his hands. Therefore my people go into for lack of knowledge. Their honorable men are famished, and their are parched with thirst. Therefore has enlarged its , and opened its without measure; and their , their multitude, their pomp, and he who rejoices among them, descend into it. So man is brought low, mankind is humbled, and the eyes of the arrogant ones are humbled; but of Armies is exalted in , and the One is in . Then the lambs will graze as in their pasture, and strangers will eat the ruins of the rich. Woe to those who draw with cords of falsehood, and wickedness as with cart rope, who say, "Let him make haste, let him hasten his work, that we may see it; let the of the One of Israel draw near and come, that we may know it!" Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put for , and for ; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Woe to those who are mighty to drink , and champions at mixing ; who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny for the innocent! Therefore as of devours the stubble, and as the dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as , because they have rejected of of Armies, and despised the word of the One of Israel. Therefore burns against his people, and he has stretched out his hand against them and has struck them. The mountains tremble, and their bodies are as refuse in the middle of the streets. For all this, his is not turned away, but his hand is still stretched out. He will lift up a banner to the nations from far away, and he will whistle for them from the end of the earth. Behold, they will come speedily and swiftly. No one shall be weary nor stumble among them; no one shall slumber nor sleep, neither shall the belt of their waist be untied, nor the strap of their be broken, whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent. Their horses' hoofs will be like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind. Their roaring will be like a lioness. They will roar like young lions. Yes, they shall roar, and seize their prey and carry it off, and there will be no one to . They will roar against them in that day like the roaring of the sea. If one looks to the land, behold, and distress. is darkened in its clouds.
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. 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