King James Version · Under Assyria
Tobit 2
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is.
1Now when I was come home again, and my wife was restored unto me, with my son , in the feast of , which is the feast of the seven weeks, there was a good dinner prepared me, in the which I sat down to eat. 2And when I saw abundance of meat, I said to my son, Go and bring what man soever thou shalt find out of our brethren, who is mindful of ; and, lo, I tarry for thee. 3But he came again, and said, , one of our nation is strangled, and is cast out in the marketplace. 4Then before I had tasted of any meat, I started up, and took him up into a room until the going down of the sun. 5Then I returned, and washed myself, and ate my meat in heaviness, 6Remembering that of , as he said, Your feasts shall be turned into , and all your mirth into . 7Therefore I wept: and after the going down of the sun I went and made a , and . 8But my neighbours mocked me, and said, This man is not yet afraid to be put to for this matter: who fled away; and yet, lo, he burieth again. 9The same night also I returned from the burial, and slept by the wall of my courtyard, being polluted and was uncovered: 10And I knew not that there were sparrows in the wall, and mine eyes being open, the sparrows muted warm dung into mine eyes, and a whiteness came in mine eyes: and I went to the physicians, but they helped me not: moreover Achiacharus did nourish me, until I went into Elymais. 11And my wife did take women’s works to do. 12And when she had sent them home to the owners, they paid her wages, and gave her also besides a kid. 13And when it was in my house, and began to cry, I said unto her, From whence is this kid? is it not stolen? render it to the owners; for it is not lawful to eat any thing that is stolen. 14But she replied upon me, It was given for a gift more than the wages. Howbeit I did not her, but bade her render it to the owners: and I was abashed at her. But she replied upon me, Where are thine alms and thy deeds? behold, thou and all thy works are known.
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.