World English Bible · Under Assyria
Micah 6
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Listen now to what says: "Arise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear what you have to say. Hear, you mountains, indictment, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for has a case against his people, and he will contend with Israel. My people, what have I done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer me! For I brought you up out of the land of , and you out of the house of bondage. I sent before you , , and Miriam. My people, remember now what king of devised, and what the son of answered him from to , that you may know acts of ." How shall I come before , and bow myself before the exalted ? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will be pleased with thousands of rams? With tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my for my ? The fruit of my body for the of ? He has shown you, O man, what is good. What does require of you, but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your ? voice calls to the city— and fears your name— "Listen to the , and he who appointed it. Are there yet of wickedness in the house of , and a short ephah that is ? Shall I tolerate dishonest scales, and a bag of deceitful weights? Her rich men are full of , her inhabitants speak lies, and their is deceitful in their speech. Therefore I also have struck you with a grievous wound. I have made you desolate because of your . You shall eat, but not be satisfied. Your will be within you. You will store up, but not , and that which you I will give up to . You will sow, but won't reap. You will tread the olives, but won't anoint yourself with oil; and crush grapes, but won't drink the . For the of are kept, and all the works of house. You walk in their counsels, that I may make you a , and your inhabitants a hissing. You will bear the of my people."
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.