King James Version · Under Assyria
Micah 5
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Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us: they shall smite the judge of Israel with a upon the cheek. But thou, Beth–lehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from . Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth: then of his brethren shall return unto the . And he shall stand and feed in the strength of , in the majesty of the name of his ; and they shall : for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth. And this man shall be the peace, when the shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven , and eight principal men. And they shall waste the land of with , and the land of in the entrances thereof: thus shall he us from the , when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders. And of shall be in the midst of many people as a from , as the upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men. And of shall be among the in the midst of many people as a lion among the of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep: who, if he go through, both treadeth down, and teareth in pieces, and none can . Thine hand shall be lifted up upon thine , and all thine . And it shall come to pass in that day, saith , that I will thy horses out of the midst of thee, and I will destroy thy chariots: And I will the cities of thy land, and throw down all thy strong holds: And I will witchcrafts out of thine hand; and thou shalt have no more soothsayers: Thy graven also will I , and thy standing out of the midst of thee; and thou shalt no more the work of thine hands. And I will pluck up thy groves out of the midst of thee: so will I destroy thy cities. And I will execute in and fury upon the heathen, such as they have not heard.
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.