King James Version · Under Assyria
Tobit 10
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1Now his counted every day: and when the days of the journey were expired, and they came not, 2Then said, Are they detained? or is Gabael , and there is no man to give him the money? 3Therefore he was very sorry. 4Then his wife said unto him, My son is , seeing he stayeth long; and she began to him, and said, 5Now I care for nothing, my son, since I have let thee go, of mine eyes. 6To whom said, Hold thy peace, take no care, for he is safe. 7But she said, Hold thy peace, and deceive me not; my son is . And she went out every day into which they went, and did eat no meat on the daytime, and ceased not whole nights to bewail her son , until the fourteen days of the were expired, which had that he should spend there. Then said to , Let me go, for and my mother look no more to see me. 8But his in law said unto him, Tarry with me, and I will send to thy , and they shall declare unto him how things go with thee. 9But said, No; but let me go to . 10Then arose, and gave him his wife, and half his goods, servants, and cattle, and money: 11And he them, and sent them away, saying, The of give you a prosperous journey, my children. 12And he said to his daughter, thy and thy mother in law, which are now thy parents, that I may hear good report of thee. And he kissed her. Edna also said to , of restore thee, my dear brother, and grant that I may see thy children of my daughter before I , that I may rejoice before : behold, I commit my daughter unto thee of special ; where are do not entreat her evil.
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.