King James Version · Under Assyria
Nahum 1
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The burden of . The book of the of the Elkoshite. is , and revengeth; revengeth, and is furious; will take on his , and he reserveth for his . is , and great in , and will not at all acquit : hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are of his feet. He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers: languisheth, and , and the flower of languisheth. The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his , yea, the world, and all that therein. Who can stand before his ? and who can in the fierceness of his ? his fury is poured out like , and the rocks are thrown down by him. is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that in him. But with an overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof, and shall pursue his . What do ye imagine against ? he will make an utter end: affliction shall not rise up the second time. For while they be folden together as , and while they are drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry. There is one come out of thee, that imagineth evil against , a counsellor. Thus saith ; Though they be quiet, and likewise many, yet thus shall they be cut down, when he shall pass through. Though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more. For now will I break his from off thee, and will burst thy bonds in sunder. And hath given a concerning thee, that no more of thy name be sown: out of the house of thy gods will I the graven and the molten : I will make thy ; for thou art vile. Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace! O Judah, keep thy solemn feasts, perform thy : for shall no more pass through thee; he is utterly .
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.