King James Version · Under Assyria
Tobit 7
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is.
1And when they were come to , they came to the house of , and met them: and after they had saluted one another, she brought them into the house. 2Then said to Edna his wife, How like is this young man to my cousin! 3And asked them, From whence are ye, brethren? To whom they said, We are of the sons of Nephthalim, which are in . 4Then he said to them, Do ye know our kinsman? And they said, We know him. Then said he, Is he in good health? 5And they said, He is both alive, and in good health: and said, He is . 6Then leaped up, and kissed him, and wept, 7And him, and said unto him, Thou art the son of an honest and good man. But when he had heard that was blind, he was sorrowful, and wept. 8And likewise Edna his wife and his daughter wept. Moreover they entertained them cheerfully; and after that they had killed a ram of the flock, they set store of meat on the table. Then said to , Brother , speak of those things of which thou didst talk in , and let this business be dispatched. 9So he communicated the matter with : and said to , Eat and drink, and make merry: 10For it is meet that thou shouldest marry my daughter: nevertheless I will declare unto thee the truth. 11I have given my daughter in marriage to seven men, who that night they came in unto her: nevertheless for the present be merry. But said, I will eat nothing here, till we agree and one to another. 12 said, Then take her from henceforth according to the manner, for thou art her cousin, and she is thine, and the merciful give you good success in all things. 13Then he called his daughter , and she came to her , and he took her by the hand, and gave her to be wife to , saying, Behold, take her after of , and lead her away to thy . And he them; 14And called Edna his wife, and took paper, and did write an instrument of , and sealed it. 15Then they began to eat. 16After called his wife Edna, and said unto her, Sister, prepare another chamber, and bring her in thither. 17Which when she had done as he had bidden her, she brought her thither: and she wept, and she received the tears of her daughter, and said unto her, 18Be of good comfort, my daughter; of and earth give thee joy for this thy sorrow: be of good comfort, my daughter.
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.