World English Bible · Under Assyria
Micah 2
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Woe to those who devise and work evil on their beds! When the morning is , they practice it, because it is in the of their hand. They fields and seize them, and houses, then take them away. They oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage. Therefore says: "Behold, I am planning against these people a disaster, from which you will not remove your necks, neither will you walk haughtily, for it is an evil time. In that day they will take up against you, and with a doleful , saying, 'We are utterly ruined! My people's possession is divided up. Indeed he takes it from me and assigns our fields to traitors!'" Therefore you will have no one who divides the land by lot in . "Don't !"—they — "Don't about these things. won't overtake us." Shall it be said, O house of , "Is angry? Are these his doings? Don't my words do good to him who walks blamelessly?" But lately my people have up as an enemy. You strip the robe and clothing from those who pass by without a care, returning from battle. You drive the women of my people out from their pleasant houses; from their young children you take away my . Arise, and depart! For this is not your , because of uncleanness that destroys, even with a grievous . If a man walking in a of falsehood lies, saying, "I will to you of and of ," he would be the of this people. I will surely assemble all of you, . I will surely gather of Israel. I will put them together as the sheep of Bozrah, as a flock in the middle of their pasture. They will swarm with people. He who breaks open goes up before them. They break through the , and go out. Their king passes on before them, with at their head.
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. 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.