King James Version · Under Assyria
Judith 14
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1Then said unto them, Hear me now, my brethren, and take this head, and hang it upon the highest place of your walls. 2And so soon as the morning shall appear, and the sun shall come forth upon the earth, take ye every one his weapons, and go forth every valiant man out of the city, and set ye a captain over them, as though ye would go down into the field toward the watch of the ; but go not down. 3Then they shall take their armour, and shall go into their camp, and raise up the captains of the army of , and shall run to the tent of , but shall not find him: then fear shall fall upon them, and they shall flee before your . 4So ye, and all that inhabit the coast of Israel, shall pursue them, and overthrow them as they go. 5But before ye do these things, call me the , that he may see and know him that despised the , and that sent him to us as it were to his . 6Then they called out of the house of ; and when he was come, and saw the head of in a man’s hand in of the people, he fell down on , and his failed. 7But when they had recovered him, he fell at ’s feet, and reverenced her, and said, art thou in all the tabernacles of , and in all nations, which hearing thy name shall be astonished. 8Now therefore tell me all the things that thou hast done in these days. Then declared unto him in the midst of the people all that she had done, from the day that she went forth until that hour she spake unto them. 9And when she had left off speaking, the people shouted with a loud voice, and made a joyful noise in their city. 10And when had seen all that the of Israel had done, he in greatly, and of his foreskin, and was joined unto the unto this day. 11And as soon as the morning arose, they hanged the head of upon the wall, and every man took his weapons, and they went forth by bands unto the straits of the mountain. 12But when the saw them, they sent to their leaders, which came to their captains and tribunes, and to every one of their . 13So they came to ’ tent, and said to him that had the charge of all his things, Waken now our : for the have been bold to come down against us to battle, that they may be . 14Then went in Bagoas, and knocked at the door of the tent; for he thought that he had slept with . 15But because none answered, he opened it, and went into the bedchamber, and found him cast upon the floor , and his head was taken from him. 16Therefore he cried with a loud voice, with weeping, and sighing, and a mighty cry, and rent his garments. 17After he went into the tent where lodged: and when he found her not, he leaped out to the people, and cried, 18These have dealt treacherously; one woman of the hath brought upon the house of king : for, behold, lieth upon the ground without a head. 19When the captains of the ’ army heard these words, they rent their coats and their were wonderfully troubled, and there was a cry and a very great noise throughout the camp.
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.