Max Duncker

“ The protection of Pharaoh shall be your shame, and the trust in Egypt your confusion. They will carry their riches on the backs of asses, and their treasures upon the bunches of camels to a people that shall not profit them. Egypt's help is vain and void. I call Egypt a tempest, which sits still. Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help, and stay on horses and on chariots because they are many, but look not unto Jehovah! The Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses are flesh, and not spirit. The protector stumbles, and the protected falls to earth. ”

“ But it shall come to pass that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks. For he saith: I have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and I have put down the princes like a valiant man. My hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people, and as one gathereth eggs that are left, have I gathered all the earth ”

“ Like the Israelites, the nation of Judah was now shattered and torn asunder. By the canals in Egypt, and by the waters of Babylon, on the Chaboras in Mesopotamia, and on the mouths of the Nile, lingered the fugitives and exiles. [671] Nothing remained to them but the remembrance of David's glory, and sorrow for the fall of Israel. But the longer duration which was allowed to the kingdom of Judah had borne good fruits. It had given the Jews time to strengthen and deepen their religious and national feeling. ”

“ The noise of the whip, and of the rattling of the wheels, and of the prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots; the horseman cometh on, the bright sword and glittering spear." "Art thou better than No-Ammon (Thebes) that was situate by the Nile?" [544] "The destroyer is come up before thee, Nineveh; keep the munition, watch the way, gird thy loins, fortify thyself mightily. Draw thee water for the siege, fortify thy strongholds; go into clay, and tread the mortar, make strong the brick-kiln. Thy mighty men hasten to the walls, but they stumble in their walk. ”

“ No more of thy name shall be sown; there is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous. All that look on thee shall flee from thee and say, Nineveh is laid waste; all that hear of thee shall clap their hands over thee, for upon whom has not thy wickedness passed continually?" [546]
How far the successes which Cyaxares obtained soon after his accession (633 B.C.) in repelling and attacking Assyria and Assurbanipal carried him—whether even then the army of the Medes advanced to the walls of Nineveh, as Herodotus states, cannot be ascertained, and cannot be denied. ”

“ Therefore I will bring Nebuchadnezzar my servant against this land and its inhabitants, saith Jehovah, and against all the nations round about, and I will destroy out of them the voice of mirth, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the mill, and the light of the lamp. The whole land shall be a desolation, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. ”

“ The only service of the holy God is a holy and righteous life. Sacrifice is not required, but recognition of God, simplicity, chastity, and moderation.
If from this point of view, to which their own conception had laboriously risen—they had learned to know the ancient God of Israel in his true nature—and following the lead of the sacred Scriptures, the prophets cast a glance on the fortunes and achievements of their nation,—had not Jehovah already announced himself to their forefathers? Had he not by Moses commanded and established the true worship? ”

“ This lawlessness is brought to an end, not by a mighty warrior, but by a clever, ambitious village-judge, who by his decisions so gains the affections of the Medes, that they elect him to be king. When chosen he knows how to lead them by cunning, or rather to infatuate them into giving him a body-guard and building him a palace. Then he compels them to live together in one city, and, in the course of a long reign, establishes the despotic system of Asia to its full extent, with all its appliances, among the Medes. ”

“ Plastic art rose with architecture: in skill the Greeks surpassed their Lydian teachers, while Thales, Anaximander, and Cadmus of Miletus laid the foundations of Greek science; the splendour of the epic, the bloom of elegiac poetry in Ephesus and Smyrna, was followed in Lesbos by the bold flight of lyric song; practical and political wisdom found representatives like Pittacus and Bias. If the Greeks were more brilliant, more wealthy than in the days of Gyges and Ardys, the dominion over them was the more to be coveted. ”

“ The far more realistic and historical sense of the Assyrians is stamped in their monuments and inscriptions. As they allow us to see, year by year, the activity, the untiring perseverance, and warlike skill of the Assyrian nation and its princes, even though they magnify their successes—so too the reverse side of these qualities is brought into prominence; the fierce cruelty, the bloody savagery which the conquered had to undergo. The kings constantly boast of the punishments they have inflicted, and appear more than once to exaggerate them. ”

“ Isaiah had proclaimed the day of judgment with more earnestness than any prophet before him. None of them had set himself with such force to take away every support from the feeling of self-confidence. The Jews were to look forward with fear and trembling to the day of judgment, that they might learn to trust in Jehovah alone, and from this renovation of the heart might spring into blossom the new and better time—the new kingdom. When all splendour and wealth is destroyed; when the chiefs and the warriors are overthrown; when "the sinners in Zion quake, and trembling seizes the godless;" ”

“ The armies of his successor not only march victoriously into the gates of Memphis, Thebes, and Babylon, but even into the gates of Susa. In repeated campaigns he annihilates the ancient kingdom of Elam, and receives from the West the homage of Lydia.
No other kingdom can display so long a series of warlike and active princes, unwearied in conflict, as Assyria. They believed that they were fighting not for dominion only, or glory, but also for their gods, for Asshur, Sin and Samas, for Istar, Bin and Adar, against the nations who did not worship these deities. ”

“ That the power exercised by the kings of Assyria was unlimited even in their own territory is beyond a doubt. The king is the supreme judge, the general in chief, the high-priest. He ascertains the will of the gods, who reveal themselves to him, who send him dreams, assure him of their assistance. It is the gods, their lords, who overthrow the enemy and the rebellious princes before them. The kings offer sacrifice and pour libations in person, not the priests. ”

“ To the cities of Tyre and Sidon, he cries: "Howl, ye ships of Tarshish, for Tyre is laid waste: there is no house more, no entering in. Be still, ye inhabitants of the coast, which the merchants of Sidon that pass over the sea replenished. By distant waters the seed of the Nile, the harvest of the river, was their revenue, and she was the mart of nations. ”

“ Jehovah had chosen Israel for his people before other nations. He desires to protect him and grant him his favour. But how can he, the pure and holy God, grant protection and defence, if his people live an impure and unholy life? To protect sinners would be against his own nature. Jehovah was a severe and jealous God; was he not to punish the defection from his service, the faithlessness and ingratitude of the nation, with grievous punishment? ”

“ Of Nebuchadnezzar, Jeremiah says: "Like a lion he will come up against the well-stocked pasture. [607] Flee, flee with all your might, ye inhabitants of Hazor, for Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, hath taken counsel against you, and hath conceived a purpose against you. Get you up to the nation which hath neither gates nor bars, and dwelleth alone; go up to Kedar and spoil the men of the East. Your tents and your flocks will they take; your curtains and your camels they will carry away; the multitude of your flocks shall be a spoil to them. ”

“ She is empty, and void, and waste, and the heart melteth, and the knees smite together, and a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcases; there is no end of their corpses. They stumble on the corpses. Thy captains fly, O king of Assyria, thy mighty men slumber, thy people is scattered on the mountains, and no man gathereth them. ”

“ Media stood triumphant over the kingdom which had so long ruled over Hither Asia and the western edge of Iran; Babylon was victorious over the branch [Pg 293] which had grown up out of her own root, had far surpassed the mother-stem, and had struck home the mother-country in many a tough struggle. Babylon had suffered far more heavily than Media. At last retribution had come. Chalah and Nineveh, which had received the tribute of the nations for so many years, which had seen so many vanquished princes, so many embassies of subjugated lands in their walls, were annihilated. ”

“ Under their foreign rulers the Jews became accustomed more and more to think of Jehovah as the one and only king of Judah who would rescue his faithful people out of their slavery in Babylon, even as he had once led them forth with a strong hand and an outstretched arm out of Egypt. In the strange land and among strangers, where the Jews were kept together by nothing more than their common religion, where besides their religion nothing was left to them, adherence to the old faith struck deeper roots, and the increasing strength of religious conviction saved the nationality. ”

“ There is no state in the ancient East, which, beginning from a reign so small in proportion, and provided with such scanty material means, rose so high as Assyria—which from such a basis attained to a wider supremacy, or maintained it so long and so vigorously. By slow and laborious steps this kingdom worked its way upward in frequent and severe conflicts beside Babylonia. To reduce and keep in obedience the region round the sources of the Euphrates and the Tigris, the land of Van and Ararat, to subjugate the territory of the Moschi and Tibarenes, required the most severe struggles. ”

“ Their warlike activity, supported by a force always in readiness, was the only foundation of their power beyond the borders of Asshur. Of the warriors of Assyria Isaiah says: "They shall come with speed from the ends of the earth; none shall be weary nor stumble among them; none shall slumber nor sleep; neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed, nor the latchet of their shoes be broken; whose arrows are sharp and all their bows bent; their horses' hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their chariots like a whirlwind. ”

“ Thus after severe tempests the reigns of Jeroboam II. and Uzziah brought to Israel and Judah the restoration of order, power and prosperity. The flourishing condition of agriculture and trade increased the well-being of the people, and produced profits which led the wealthy classes into a misuse of their wealth, into extravagance and luxury. This mode of life, which seldom, in the East especially, fails to accompany gains easily got, was attacked in both kingdoms by a merciless criticism. ”

“ How far he succeeded, in this space of time, in healing the grievous wounds inflicted on the country by the alternating struggle of Ethiopians and Assyrians, and the war of liberation, the civil war,—in restoring Memphis, Sais, Tanis, and Thebes, after their destruction, we cannot ascertain. But the impulse given to trade and intercourse by the opening of the harbours, the favour shown to the Greeks and Phenicians, in any case increased the welfare of Egypt, and the industrial and artistic activity which begins in the reign of Psammetichus presupposes considerable prosperity in the land. ”

“ Nabopolassar of Babylon, and Cyaxares of Media, had already been united against Assyria for ten years past; even now, after Nabopolassar had brought about a peace between Lydia and Media, they set themselves to give the last blow to the fallen remnant of Assyria. Psammetichus had attempted to establish himself in the south-west corner of Syria; a more favourable moment could not come to Egypt for winning Syria, for repeating the campaigns of the ancient Pharaohs to the Euphrates, and showing in this direction also the new royal house to be the restorer of the ancient glory. ”

“ The easier and more secure connection with Babylon might, at any rate, teach them to forget in part the loss which their market had suffered by the fall of Nineveh. The increased productiveness of agriculture, the livelier trade, and consequent growth of industry, could not but raise the power and resources of the Babylonian kingdom. The more lively the intercourse between the two great halves of the kingdom separated by the desert, the more passable the desert became, the easier was it for troops to march from Babylon to Gaza, from Harran to Hamath. ”

“ Babylonia, has preserved for us no inconsiderable remains of Assyrian arts, and ocular evidence of the industry and mode of life, of the character and manners of the Assyrians—not indeed in the breadth and unbroken succession of development in which the monuments and the inexhaustible sepulchres on the Nile have retained the picture of ancient Egypt. For monuments of plastic art, the ruins of Erech, and Ur, and of Babylon, have been investigated almost in vain. ”

“ When he heard of the life and manners of the king, he was of opinion that Sardanapalus was only ruler over Assyria for lack of a braver man. He was acquainted with Belesys, the viceroy of Babylon, who waited with him at the door of the king. Belesys was of the tribe of the Chaldæans, who were the priests, and enjoyed the greatest respect; the Babylonians were also the most skilful astronomers, and distinguished by experience in matters divine, in the art of the seer, and the interpretation of dreams and wonders. To this man Arbaces imparted his thoughts. ”