Quotes about Assyrians

And at the end of three years, the Assyrians captured it. So Samaria was captured in the sixth year of Hezekiah, which was the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel.

And that very night the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 men in the camp of the Assyrians. When the people got up the next morning, there were all the dead bodies!

Then the Assyrians called out loudly in Hebrew to the people of Jerusalem who were on the wall, to frighten and terrify them in order to capture the city.

Look at the land of the Chaldeans—a people now of no account. The Assyrians destined it for the desert creatures; they set up their siege towers and stripped its palaces. They brought it to ruin.

Then the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 men in the camp of the Assyrians. When the people got up the next morning, there were all the dead bodies!

Then you prostituted yourself with the Assyrians, because you were not yet satisfied. Even after that, you were still not satisfied.

Therefore I delivered her into the hands of her lovers, the Assyrians for whom she lusted.

She too lusted after the Assyrians—governors and commanders, warriors dressed in splendor, horsemen riding on steeds, all desirable young men.

the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, the men of Pekod, Shoa, and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them—all desirable young men, governors and commanders, officers and men of renown, mounted on horses.

Oppression and opposition to Jews is nothing new in world history. The descendants of Abraham were enslaved in Egypt for 400 years, then the ten northern tribes were captured by the Assyrians in 722 BC and the two southern tribes by the Babylonians in 586 BC. (Granted, these captivities were due to the Jews' sins.)

Hence, as John Owen said: Sin's proper formal object is God It hath, as it were, that command from Satan which the Assyrians had from their king: "fight neither with small nor great, save only with the king of Israel," that sin sets itself against. There lies the secret, the formal reason of all opposition to good, even because it relates unto God.... The law of sin makes not opposition to any duty, but to God in every duty.

Arguing about how it literally happened can be an easy way to avoid facing the people in your life you need to forgive. For the people who first heard this story, the story would have had a provocative, unsettling effect. The Assyrians? The Assyrians were like a huge, gaping, open wound for the Israelites. Bless the Assyrians? The story is extremely subversive because it insists that your enemy may be more open to grace and love than you are.