World English Bible · Under Assyria
Micah 5
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Now you shall gather yourself in troops, daughter of troops. He has laid siege against us. They will strike the judge of Israel with a on the cheek. But you, , being small among the clans of Judah, out of you one will come out to me who is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings out are from of old, from ancient times. Therefore he will abandon them until the time that she who is in labor gives birth. Then the rest of his brothers will return to the . He shall stand, and shall in the strength of , in the majesty of the name of his . They will live, for then he will be great to the ends of the earth. He will be our peace when invades our land and when he marches through our fortresses, then we will raise against him seven , and eight leaders of men. They will rule the land of with , and the land of in its . He will us from the , when he invades our land, and when he marches within our border. of will be among many peoples like from , like on the grass, that don't wait for man nor wait for the sons of men. of will be among the nations, among many peoples, like a lion among the animals of the forest, like a young lion among the flocks of sheep; who, if he goes through, treads down and tears in pieces, and there is no one to . Let your hand be lifted up above your , and let all of your . "It will happen in that day", , "that I will your horses from among you and will destroy your chariots. I will the cities of your land and will tear down all your strongholds. I will destroy from your hand. You shall have no soothsayers. I will your engraved and your pillars from among you; and you shall no more the work of your hands. I will uproot your from among you; and I will destroy your cities. I will execute in and on the nations that didn't listen."
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.