King James Version · Under Assyria
Judith 12
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1Then he commanded to bring her in where his plate was set; and bade that they should prepare for her of his own meats, and that she should drink of his own . 2And said, I will not eat thereof, lest there be an offence: but provision shall be made for me of the things that I have brought. 3Then said unto her, If thy provision should fail, how should we give thee the like? for there be none with us of thy nation. 4Then said unto him As thy liveth, my , thine handmaid shall not spend those things that I have, before work by mine hand the things that he hath determined. 5Then the servants of brought her into the tent, and she slept till midnight, and she arose when it was toward the morning watch, 6And sent to , saving, Let my now command that thine handmaid may go forth unto . 7Then commanded his guard that they should not stay her: thus she abode in the camp three days, and went out in the night into the valley of , and washed herself in a fountain of water by the camp. 8And when she came out, she besought of Israel to direct her way to the raising up of the children of her people. 9So she came in clean, and remained in the tent, until she did eat her meat at evening. 10And in the fourth day made a feast to his own servants only, and called none of the officers to the banquet. 11Then said he to Bagoas , who had charge over all that he had, Go now, and persuade this woman which is with thee, that she come unto us, and eat and drink with us. 12For, lo, it will be a for our person, if we shall let such a woman go, not having had her company; for if we draw her not unto us, she will laugh us to scorn. 13Then went Bagoas from the of , and came to her, and he said, Let not this fair damsel fear to come to my , and to be honoured in his , and drink , and be merry with us and be made this day as one of the daughters of the , which in the house of . 14Then said unto him, Who am I now, that I should gainsay my ? surely whatsoever pleaseth him I will do speedily, and it shall be my joy unto the day of my . 15So she arose, and decked herself with her apparel and all her woman’s attire, and her maid went and laid soft skins on the ground for her over against , which she had received of Bagoas far her daily use, that she might sit and eat upon them. 16Now when came in and sat down, was ravished with her, and his was moved, and he greatly her company; for he waited a time to deceive her, from the day that he had seen her. 17Then said unto her, Drink now, and be merry with us. 18So said, I will drink now, my , because my life is magnified in me this day more than all the days since I was born. 19Then she took and ate and drank before him what her maid had prepared. 20And took great delight in her, and drank more than he had drunk at any time in one day since he was born.
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.