King James Version · Under Assyria
Judith 5
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1Then was it declared to , the chief captain of the army of , that the had prepared for war, and had shut up the passages of the hill country, and had fortified all the tops of the high hills and had laid impediments in the champaign countries: 2Wherewith he was very angry, and called all the princes of , and the captains of , and all the governors of the sea coast, 3And he said unto them, Tell me now, ye sons of , who this people is, that dwelleth in the hill country, and what are the cities that they inhabit, and what is of their army, and wherein is their and strength, and what king is set over them, or captain of their army; 4And why have they determined not to come and meet me, more than all the inhabitants of the west. 5Then said , the captain of all the sons of , Let my now hear a word from the of thy servant, and I will declare unto thee the truth concerning this people, which dwelleth near thee, and inhabiteth the hill countries: and there shall no lie come out of the of thy servant. 6This people are descended of the : 7And they sojourned heretofore in , because they would not follow the gods of their fathers, which were in the land of . 8For they left of their ancestors, and the of , the whom they knew: so they cast them out from the of their gods, and they fled into , and sojourned there many days. 9Then their commanded them to depart from the place where they sojourned, and to go into the land of : where they dwelt, and were increased with gold and silver, and with very much cattle. 10But when a covered all the land of , they went down into , and sojourned there, while they were nourished, and became there a great multitude, so that one could not number their nation. 11Therefore the king of rose up against them, and dealt subtilly with them, and brought them low with labouring in brick, and made them . 12Then they cried unto their , and he smote all the land of with incurable plagues: so the cast them out of their sight. 13And dried before them, 14And brought them to mount Sina, and -Barne, and cast forth all that dwelt in . 15So they dwelt in the land of the , and they destroyed by their strength all them of Esebon, and passing over Jordan they all the hill country. 16And they cast forth before them the Chanaanite, the Pherezite, the , and the Sychemite, and all the Gergesites, and they dwelt in that country many days. 17And whilst they not before their , they prospered, because the that hateth was with them. 18But when they departed from which he appointed them, they were destroyed in many battles very sore, and were led into a land that was not their’s, and of their was cast to the ground, and their cities were taken by the . 19But now are they returned to their , and are come up from the places where they were scattered, and have , where their sanctuary is, and are seated in the hill country; for it was desolate. 20Now therefore, my and governor, if there be any error against this people, and they against their , let us consider that this shall be their , and let us go up, and we shall overcome them. 21But if there be no in their nation, let my now pass by, lest their defend them, and their be for them, and we become a before all the world. 22And when had finished these sayings, all the people standing round about the tent murmured, and the chief men of , and all that dwelt by the sea side, and in , spake that he should kill him. 23For, say they, we will not be afraid of the of the : for, lo, it is a people that have no strength nor for a strong battle 24Now therefore, , we will go up, and they shall be a prey to be devoured of all thine army.
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.