King James Version · Under Assyria
Tobit 14
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is.
1So made an end of praising . 2And he was eight and fifty years old when he lost his sight, which was restored to him after eight years: and he gave alms, and he increased in the , and praised him. 3And when he was very aged he called his son, and the sons of his son, and said to him, My son, take thy children; for, behold, I am aged, and am ready to depart out of this life. 4Go into my son, for I surely those things which the spake of , that it shall be overthrown; and that for a time peace shall rather be in ; and that our brethren shall lie scattered in the earth from that good land: and shall be desolate, and the house of in it shall be burned, and shall be desolate for a time; 5And that again will have mercy on them, and bring them again into the land, where they shall build a temple, but not like to the first, until the time of that age be fulfilled; and afterward they shall return from all places of their , and build up gloriously, and the house of shall be built in it for ever with a building, as have spoken thereof. 6And all nations shall turn, and truly, and shall bury their idols. 7So shall all nations , and his people shall , and shall exalt his people; and all those which love in truth and justice shall rejoice, shewing mercy to our brethren. 8And now, my son, depart out of , because that those things which the spake shall surely come to pass. 9But keep thou and , and shew thyself merciful and , that it may go well with thee. 10And bury me decently, and thy mother with me; but tarry no longer at . Remember, my son, how handled Achiacharus that brought him up, how out of he brought him into , and how he rewarded him again: yet Achiacharus was , but the other had his reward: for he went down into . gave alms, and escaped the snares of which they had set for him: but fell into the snare, and . 11Wherefore now, my son, consider what alms doeth, and how doth . When he had said these things, he gave up the ghost in the bed, being an hundred and eight and fifty years old; and he honourably. 12And when his mother was , he buried her with his . But departed with his wife and children to to his in law, 13Where he became old with , and he buried his and mother in law honourably, and he their substance, and his ’s. 14And he at in , being an hundred and seven and twenty years old. 15But before he he heard of the of , which was taken by and Assuerus: and before his he rejoiced over .
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.