King James Version · Under Assyria
Judith 1
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1In the twelfth year of the reign of , who reigned in , the great city; in the days of Arphaxad, which reigned over the in , 2And built in walls round about of stones hewn three broad and six long, and made the height of the wall seventy , and the breadth thereof fifty : 3And set the towers thereof upon the of it an hundred high, and the breadth thereof in the foundation threescore : 4And he made the thereof, even that were to the height of seventy , and the breadth of them was forty , for the going forth of his mighty armies, and for the setting in array of his footmen: 5Even in those days king made war with king Arphaxad in the great plain, which is the plain in the borders of Ragau. 6And there came unto him all they that dwelt in the hill country, and all that dwelt by , and Tigris and Hydaspes, and the plain of the king of the Elymeans, and very many nations of the sons of Chelod, assembled themselves to the battle. 7Then king of the sent unto all that dwelt in , and to all that dwelt westward, and to those that dwelt in , and , and Libanus, and Antilibanus, and to all that dwelt upon the sea coast, 8And to those among the nations that were of , and , and the higher , and the great plain of Esdrelom, 9And to all that were in and the cities thereof, and beyond Jordan unto , and Betane, and Chelus, and Kades, and the river of , and Taphnes, and Ramesse, and all the land of Gesem, 10Until ye come beyond and , and to all the inhabitants of , until ye come to the borders of . 11But all the inhabitants of the land made of the of king of the , neither went they with him to the battle; for they were not afraid of him: yea, he was before them as one man, and they sent away his ambassadors from them without effect, and with . 12Therefore was very angry with all this country, and sware by his and kingdom, that he would surely be upon all those coasts of , and , and , and that he would with all the inhabitants of the land of , and , and all , and all that were in , till ye come to the borders of the two seas. 13Then he marched in battle array with his against king Arphaxad in the seventeenth year, and he prevailed in his battle: for he overthrew all the of Arphaxad, and all his horsemen, and all his chariots, 14And became of his cities, and came unto , and took the towers, and spoiled the streets thereof, and turned the beauty thereof into . 15He took also Arphaxad in the mountains of Ragau, and smote him through with his darts, and destroyed him utterly that day. 16So he returned afterward to , both he and all his company of sundry nations being a very great multitude of men of war, and there he took his ease, and banqueted, both he and his army, an hundred and twenty days.
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.