King James Version · Under Assyria
Judith 6
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1And when the tumult of men that were about was ceased, the chief captain of the army of said unto and all the before all the company of other nations, 2And who art thou, , and the hirelings of , that thou hast prophesied against us as to day, and hast said, that we should not make war with the people of Israel, because their will defend them? and who is but ? 3He will send his , and will destroy them from the of the earth, and their shall not them: but we his servants will destroy them as one man; for they are not able to sustain the of our horses. 4For with them we will tread them under foot, and their mountains shall be drunken with their , and their fields shall be filled with their bodies, and their footsteps shall not be able to stand before us, for they shall utterly , saith king , of all the earth: for he said, None of my words shall be in . 5And thou, , an hireling of , which hast spoken these words in the day of thine , shalt see no more from this day, until I take of this nation that came out of . 6And then shall of mine army, and of them that me, pass through thy sides, and thou shalt fall among their slain, when I return. 7Now therefore my servants shall bring thee back into the hill country, and shall set thee in one of the cities of the passages: 8And thou shalt not , till thou be destroyed with them. 9And if thou persuade thyself in thy that they shall be taken, let not thy countenance fall: I have spoken it, and none of my words shall be in . 10Then commanded his servants, that waited in his tent, to take , and bring him to , and him into the hands of the . 11So his servants took him, and brought him out of the camp into the plain, and they went from the midst of the plain into the hill country, and came unto the fountains that were under . 12And when the men of the city saw them, they took up their weapons, and went out of the city to the top of the hill: and every man that used a sling kept them from coming up by casting of stones against them. 13Nevertheless having gotten privily under the hill, they bound , and cast him down, and left him at the foot of the hill, and returned to their . 14But the descended from their city, and came unto him, and loosed him, and brought him to , and presented him to the governors of the city: 15Which were in those days the son of Micha, of the tribe of Simeon, and Chabris the son of Gothoniel, and Charmis the son of Melchiel. 16And they called together all the ancients of the city, and all their youth ran together, and their women, to , and they set in the midst of all their people. Then asked him of that which was done. 17And he answered and declared unto them the words of of , and all the words that he had spoken in the midst of the princes of , and whatsoever had spoken proudly against the . 18Then the people fell down and , and cried unto . saying, 19O of , behold their pride, and the low estate of our nation, and look upon the of those that are unto thee this day. 20Then they comforted , and praised him greatly. 21And took him out of unto his house, and made a feast to the ; and they called on the of Israel all that night for help.
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.