King James Version · Under Assyria
Judith 9
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is.
1 fell upon her , and put upon her head, and uncovered the wherewith she was clothed; and about the time that the of that evening was offered in in the cried with a loud voice, and said, 2O of Simeon, to whom thou gavest a to take of the strangers, who loosened the girdle of a maid to defile her, and discovered the thigh to her , and polluted her virginity to her ; for thou saidst, It shall not be so; and yet they did so: 3Wherefore thou gavest their to be slain, so that they dyed their bed in , being deceived, and smotest the servants with their lords, and the lords upon their ; 4And hast given their wives for a prey, and their daughters to be , and all their spoils to be divided among thy dear children; which were moved with thy , and abhorred the pollution of their , and called upon thee for aid: O , O my , hear me also a . 5For thou hast wrought not only those things, but also the things which fell out before, and which ensued after; thou hast thought upon the things which are now, and which are to come. 6Yea, what things thou didst determine were ready at hand, and said, Lo, we are here: for all thy ways are prepared, and thy judgments are in thy foreknowledge. 7For, behold, the are multiplied in their ; they are exalted with horse and man; they in the strength of their footmen; they in shield, and spear, and bow, and sling; and know not that thou art that breakest the battles: is thy name. 8Throw down their strength in thy , and bring down their force in thy : for they have purposed to defile thy sanctuary, and to pollute the where thy name resteth and to cast down with of thy . 9Behold their pride, and send thy upon their heads: give into mine hand, which am a , the that I have conceived. 10Smite by the deceit of my the servant with the prince, and the prince with the servant: break down their stateliness by the hand of a woman. 11For thy standeth not in multitude nor thy might in strong men: for thou art a of , an helper of the oppressed, an upholder of the weak, a protector of the forlorn, a of them that are without . 12I thee, I thee, O of , and of the of Israel, of and earth, Creator of the waters, king of every creature, hear thou my : 13And make my speech and deceit to be their wound and stripe, who have purposed cruel things against thy , and thy hallowed house, and against the top of , and against the house of the possession of thy children. 14And make every nation and tribe to that thou art the of all and might, and that there is none other that protecteth the people of Israel but thou.
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.