King James Version · Under Assyria
Judith 13
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is.
1Now when the evening was come, his servants made haste to depart, and Bagoas shut his tent without, and dismissed the waiters from the of his ; and they went to their beds: for they were all weary, because the feast had been long. 2And was left along in the tent, and lying along upon his bed: for he was filled with . 3Now had commanded her maid to stand without her bedchamber, and to wait for her. coming forth, as she did daily: for she said she would go forth to her prayers, and she spake to Bagoas according to the same purpose. 4So all went forth and none was left in the bedchamber, neither little nor great. Then , standing by his bed, said in her , O of all , look at this present upon the works of mine hands for the exaltation of . 5For now is the time to help thine , and to execute thine enterprizes to the of the which are against us. 6Then she came to of the bed, which was at ’ head, and took down his fauchion from thence, 7And approached to his bed, and took hold of the hair of his head, and said, Strengthen me, O of Israel, this day. 8And she smote twice upon his neck with all her might, and she took away his head from him. 9And tumbled his body down from the bed, and pulled down the canopy from the pillars; and anon after she went forth, and gave his head to her maid; 10And she put it in her bag of meat: so they twain went together according to their custom unto : and when they passed the camp, they compassed the valley, and went up the mountain of , and came to the thereof. 11Then said afar off, to the watchmen at the , Open, open now the : , even our , is with us, to shew his yet in , and his forces against , as he hath even done this day. 12Now when the men of her city heard her voice, they made haste to go down to the of their city, and they called the . 13And then they ran all together, both small and great, for it was strange unto them that she was come: so they opened the , and received them, and made a for a , and stood round about them. 14Then she said to them with a loud voice, , , , I say, for he hath not taken away his mercy from the , but hath destroyed our by mine hands this night. 15So she took the head out of the bag, and shewed it, and said unto them, behold the head of , the chief captain of the army of , and behold the canopy, wherein he did lie in his drunkenness; and hath smitten him by the hand of a woman. 16As liveth, who hath kept me in my way that I went, my countenance hath deceived him to his , and yet hath he not committed with me, to defile and me. 17Then all the people were wonderfully astonished, and bowed themselves and , and said with one accord, be thou, O our , which hast this day brought to nought the of thy people. 18Then said unto her, O daughter, art thou of above all the women upon the earth; and be , which hath created and the earth, which hath directed thee to the cutting off of the head of the chief of our . 19For this thy confidence shall not depart from of men, which remember the of for ever. 20And turn these things to thee for a perpetual , to visit thee in good things because thou hast not spared thy life for the affliction of our nation, but hast revenged our , walking a straight way before our . And all the people said; So be it, so be it.
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.