King James Version · Under Assyria
Micah 7
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Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grapegleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat: the firstripe fruit. The good man is out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for ; they hunt every man his brother with a net. That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward; and the great man, he uttereth his mischievous : so they wrap it up. The best of them is as a brier: the most upright is sharper than a hedge: the day of thy watchmen and thy visitation cometh; now shall be their perplexity. ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide: keep the doors of thy from her that lieth in thy . For the son dishonoureth , the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; a man’s are the men of his own house. Therefore I will look unto ; I will wait for the of my : my will hear me. Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit , shall be a unto me. I will bear the of , because I have against him, until he plead my cause, and execute for me: he will bring me forth to , and I shall behold his . Then she that is mine enemy shall see it, and shall cover her which said unto me, Where is thy ? mine eyes shall behold her: now shall she be trodden down as the mire of the streets. In the day that thy walls are to be built, in that day shall the be far removed. In that day also he shall come even to thee from , and from the fortified cities, and from the even to the river, and from sea to sea, and from mountain to mountain. Notwithstanding the land shall be desolate because of them that therein, for the fruit of their doings. Feed thy people with thy , the thine heritage, which solitarily in the wood, in the midst of : let them feed in and , as in the days of old. According to the days of thy coming out of the land of will I shew unto him marvellous things. shall see and be confounded at all their might: they shall lay their hand upon their , their ears shall be deaf. They shall lick like a , they shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth: they shall be afraid of our , and shall fear because of thee. Who is a like unto thee, that pardoneth , and passeth by the of of his heritage? he retaineth not his for ever, because he delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, he will have upon us; he will our ; and thou wilt cast all their into the depths of the sea. Thou wilt perform the truth to , and the mercy to , which thou hast unto our fathers from the days of old.
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.