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The strongholds of the lesser Semitic peoples have almost all succumbed, and Syria is a well-picked bone snatched by one foreign dog from another. The Assyrian colossus which bestrid the west Asiatic world has failed and collapsed, and the Medes and the Chaldaeans these two clouds no bigger than a man's hand which had lain on Assyria's horizon fill her seat and her room.
Jerusalem was to be brought to great misery by everlasting burnings, as well as by being besieged by the Assyrians; and yet the very shaking of the earth and eruption of fire which was nearly to destroy it, was to be the cause of its deliverance. So Isaiah prophesied, and we cannot doubt his words came true. For this may explain to us the way in which the king of Assyria's army was destroyed.
Your common mercies are His love tokens, and they all come to us, just as the gifts of parents to their children do, with this on the fly-leaf, 'With a father's love. Whatever comes to God's child with that inscription, surely it ought to kindle a thrill of gladness. That 'the king of Assyria's heart is turned'; shall we thank the king of Assyria? Yes and No! For it was God who 'turned' it.
This great eruption or breaking out of burning mountains, which would destroy the king of Assyria's army, was to happen, Isaiah says, close to Jerusalem, nay, it was to shake Jerusalem itself.
Enterprising kings, like Jeroboam II., and Menahem, taking advantage of Assyria's weakness, did not content themselves with merely throwing off her yoke, but proceeded to enlarge their dominions at the expense of her feudatories.
Before we enter into a discussion of Assyria's origin and early history in the light of recent excavation and research, it is necessary that we should return once more to Egypt, and describe the course of her history from the period when Thebes succeeded in displacing Memphis as the capital city.
So we find Asshur joining the men of Arbela in both the rebellions mentioned above, and it appears always to have been ready to welcome attempts by the Babylonian Semites to regain their old predominance over Southern Assyria. As we should expect from geographical circumstances, Assyria's most perilous and persistent foreign enemies were the fierce hillmen of the north.
The principal changes which time and conquest had made among the neighbors of Assyria were the following. Towards the west she was brought into contact with the kingdom of Damascus, and, through her tributary Samaria with Judea. The Moschi seem to have withdrawn a little from this neighborhood, since they no longer appear either among Assyria's enemies or her tributaries.
The vulture is commonly represented flying in the air, in attendance upon the march and the battle sometimes devouring, as he flies, the entrails of one of Assyria's enemies. He is evidently sought as food. One appears, in a sculpture of Sargon's. in the act of climbing the stein of a tree, like the nut-hatch or the woodpecker.
Sin, the Moon-god, ranked next to Beltis in Assyrian mythology, and his place is thus either fifth or sixth in the full lists, according as Beltis is, or is not, inserted. There is no sign which is more frequent on the cylinder-seals, whether Babylonian or Assyrian, and it would thus seem that Sin was among the most popular of Assyria's deities.
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