King James Version · Under Assyria
Tobit 8
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is.
1And when they had supped, they brought in unto her. 2And as he went, he remembered the words of , and took the of the perfumes, and put and the liver of the fish thereupon, and made a smoke therewith. 3The which smell when the had smelled, he fled into the utmost parts of , and bound him. 4And after that they were both shut in together, rose out of the bed, and said, Sister, arise, and let us that would have on us. 5Then began to say, art thou, O of our fathers, and is thy and name for ever; let thee, and all thy creatures. 6Thou madest , and gavest him Eve his wife for an helper and stay: of them came mankind: thou hast said, It is not good that man should be alone; let us make unto him an aid like unto himself. 7And now, O , I take not this my sister for but uprightly: therefore mercifully ordain that we may become aged together. 8And she said with him, . 9So they slept both that night. And arose, and went and made a , 10Saying, I fear lest he also be . 11But when was come into his house, 12He said unto his wife Edna. Send one of the maids, and let her see whether he be alive: if he be not, that we may bury him, and no man know it. 13So the maid opened the door, and went in, and found them both asleep, 14And came forth, and told them that he was alive. 15Then praised , and said, O , thou art worthy to be praised with all pure and ; therefore let thy thee with all thy creatures; and let all thine and thine elect thee for ever. 16Thou art to be praised, for thou hast made me joyful; and that is not come to me which I suspected; but thou hast dealt with us according to thy great mercy. 17Thou art to be praised because thou hast had mercy of two that were the only begotten children of their fathers: grant them mercy, O , and finish their life in health with joy and mercy. 18Then bade his servants to fill the . 19And he kept the fourteen days. 20For before the days of the marriage were finished, had said unto him by an , that he should not depart till the fourteen days of the marriage were expired; 21And then he should take the half of his goods, and go in safety to his ; and should have the rest when I and my wife be .
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.