Assyria is a country on the upper Tigris in Mesopotamia, also the empire ruled by the Assyrians. The name became so much a synonym of imperial rule over that region that the Babylonians, and later the Persians, who succeeded Assyria as world powers, were occasionally called “Assyrians” (Lam. 5:6; Ezek. 6:22).
The scarcity of land may have been responsible for some of the national characteristics of the Assyrians. They were enterprising commercial people, fearless warriors, and talented organizers. Although rigidly disciplining themselves, they could be cruel to others. The Assyrians were Semites like the Babylonians and Aramaeans (Gen. 10:22) and spoke a language closely related to Babylonian. They also used the cuneiform script of the Babylonians with some local modifications in the shape of the characters.
Being Semites, the Assyrians had many gods in common with other Semitic nations, worshipping the great Babylonian deities such as the sun god Shamash; Sin, the moon god; Ea, the god of waters; and Ishtar, the great goddess of fertility. They also honored Anu, Marduk, and his son Nabu. However, the principal god throughout their history was Ashur, who did not belong to the Babylonian pantheon. They depicted Ashur as a winged sun that protected and guided the king, his principal servant. He was also symbolized by a tree, a representative of fertility. Yet he was first and foremost a war god, and war became part of the national religion of the Assyrians. Assyria regarded every military campaign as carried out in response to the direct orders of Ashur. Hence participation in warfare was an act of worship. This association of Ashur with Assyrian military campaigns accounts for the fact that the cult of Ashur vanished with the destruction of the Assyrian Empire, in contrast to the cults of the gods of other nations, which survived the destruction of their people.
A brief statement in Genesis 10:11-12 shows that the Assyrian cities owed their existence to an extension of the power of early Babylonia. Micah 5:6 calls Assyria simply the land of Nimrod, who was the first empire builder operating from Lower Mesopotamia. In secular history, Assyria appears first in the nineteenth century BC as a vassal kingdom of southern Mesopotamian kings. From that time on, it was engaged in a continual struggle for independence, supremacy, and sometimes imperial power over other nations.
During the latter part of the second millennium BC, several strong and ambitious Assyrian rulers tried to establish an empire and succeeded briefly. Beginning, however, about 150 years after the death of Tiglath-pileser I (1113-1074 BC), Assyria was (from 933 until shortly before 612 BC) the most powerful nation on earth for about 300 years. It established an empire that covered all of Mesopotamia and most of its neighboring countries, wider areas of Anatolia, all of Syria and Palestine, and even, for a short time, Egypt. It was during this period that Assyria came into close contact with the Hebrews and eventually destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel. As a result, we find several Assyrian kings mentioned in the Bible and 11 Hebrew kings named in Assyrian records (Omri, Ahab, Jehu, Joash, Menahem, Pekah, Hoshea of Israel, Azariah, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh of Judah).
The first strong ruler of this new period was Ashur-dan II (933-910 BC), who conquered northern Mesopotamia. From his time on, the Assyrian armies marched into foreign countries practically every year. Two kings, Ashurnasirpal II (884-859 BC) and Shalmaneser III (859-824 BC) had led Assyria to political and military greatness. Some historians consider this period as one of the golden ages of Mesopotamia. During the ninth century, Assyria had posed a great threat to Israel. One of Israel’s kings, Ahab, had joined an alliance of 12 small nations determined to stop Shalmaneser III’s westward advance. In the ensuing battle of Qarqar in 853 BC, Ahab was killed. Shalmaneser III records that 12 years later, he received tribute from King Jehu of Israel, and his carved Black Obelisk shows Jehu kneeling before him. During his long reign of 35 years, this Assyrian king campaigned in practically all the countries surrounding his homeland. Nevertheless, even during the lifetime of Shalmaneser III, the Assyrian kingdom began to collapse. Provincial governors gained increasing power until the imperial administrators found themselves unable to control local officials.
Ashur-da’in-apal, one of the Shalmaneser’s sons, started a major revolt in Assyria in 826 BC while his father was still alive. Another son put down the rebellion seven years later. Succeeding kings were weak. Continuing strife plunged the empire into a period of stagnation. During the next 80 years, the empire lost much of its hold on the subjugated nations. While military campaigns occasionally reached as far as Damascus, which Adadnirari III (810-782 BC) conquered from Hazael (he also received tribute from King Joash of Israel), the Assyrian military successes were not permanent. It must have been in this period, probably under Adadnirari III, that Jonah carried out his mission to Nineveh.
During this period of decline, small nations such as Israel, Judah, and a series of Syrian states emerged or gained a new power. Inside Assyria, the various provincial rulers governed almost independently. Perhaps this is why Jonah 3:6 speaks of the king of Nineveh instead of the king of Assyria. He may have been a local ruler with perhaps more power than the actual ruler of the empire. The king of Nineveh could also issue a decree without getting imperial approval (see v. 7). Jeroboam II of Israel took advantage of this period of comparative weakness in Assyria to restore control over territories that had been lost since the time of Solomon.
However, the Assyrians made a marvelous comeback when Tiglath-pileser III occupied the throne (745-727 BC). Although Assyria had conquered Babylon many times and brought it as a vassal kingdom under Assyrian overlordship, the empire always had eventually lost it. To prevent that happening again, Tiglath-pileser III united it firmly with Assyria by crowning himself as king of Babylon under the throne name of Pul. He also established firm control over the area of Syria and parts of Palestine and destroyed many city-states, such as Damascus, reorganizing the conquered areas as Assyrian provinces. He had their populations transplanted to other areas of the empire, and their territories resettled with peoples from other subjugated countries.
In Palestine, he detached the northern, western, and Transjordanian parts of the defeated kingdom of Israel and made them into three Assyrian provinces. The western area became the province of Du’ru (Dor), the northern area the province of Magidû (Megiddo), and the area east of the Jordan became the province of Gal’aza (Gilead). After deporting numbers of captives, he allowed the remainder, with Samaria as their capital, to survive as a small vassal state. Ahaz, the king of Judah, voluntarily submitted to the king of Assyria and became his vassal.
Shalmaneser V (727-722 BC), a successor of Tiglath-pileser III, ruled only briefly but copied his predecessor’s methods. He assumed the kingship of Babylon under the name of Ululai and fought a coalition of western kings (to whom Israel belonged) who had ceased to pay tribute. Samaria was besieged for three years and captured probably shortly before the king’s death because the task of deporting the Israelites and resettling their territory by people from other areas fell on the shoulders of Sargon II, his successor. The latter claimed that he conquered Samaria during the first year of his reign.
Sargon II (722-705 BC) was probably a usurper, although he called himself “son of Tiglath-pileser.” In his numerous campaigns, he defeated the Elamites in the east, Mardukapal-iddina (the biblical Merodach-bala-dan) of Babylon in the south, and the Urarteans and Aramaeans in the north and northwest. He also built a new capital, Dur-Sharrakin, now called Khorsabad, a few miles north of Nineveh.
Sennacherib (705-681 BC), son of Sargon II, took great interest in technical improvements of his war machinery. He rebuilt Nineveh and made it the most glorious city of its time. Ruthless and uncompromising, Sennachcrib made some far-reaching political blunders, such as his senseless destruction of Babylon in 689 BC, in order to end the continued rebellions of that city. Because of his policies, he became the most hated person of that era. In 701 BC, he crushed a rebellion of Syrian and Palestinian princes and then moved against the kingdom of Hezekiah, who may have been the leader in the revolt. He destroyed many cities of Judah, including the strong fortress city of Lachish. Jerusalem was saved when Sennacherib had to break off his campaign because his army was urgently needed elsewhere.
Later, after the Nubian Tirhakah (Taharka) ascended the throne of Egypt, Sennacherib may have returned to destroy Hezekiah’s kingdom. This campaign ended in disaster—a circumstance that accounts for its omission from the king’s annuals. However, the Bible mentions the campaign (2 Kings 19:2; 2 Chron. 32; Isa. 37). His own sons murdered him—an event recorded both in the Bible and in Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions.
Esarhaddon (681-669 BC), a son of Sennacherib who had not been involved in the assassination of his father, took the throne. The great achievement of his reign was a successful military campaign against Egypt, which pushed the Assyrian Empire to its greatest extent. However, troubles against the empire rose in the border regions, where nations such as the Scythians, Cimmerians, and Medes attempted to overrun sections of the Assyrian territory to obtain some of its wealth. Esarhaddon managed to hold these nations back but was unable to eliminate the threat. Under his son Ashurbanipal (669-627? BC), the empire reached its height in glory and extent, but definite signs of weaknesses foreshadowed the rapid decline and destruction of the empire. Assyria once again subjugated Egypt, which had revolted during the last years of his father’s reign, and sacked Thebes, probably the largest city of the world at that time. Babylon, led by Shamash-shum-ukin, Ashurbanipal’s brother, staged a short-lived revolt.
Details of the last years of the Assyrian Empire are meager for lack of clear historical records. Two of Ashurbanpial’s sons ruled for a few years over Assyria but were unable to cope with the forces gathering against the empire, especially the Babylonians and the Medes. The former, who had proclaimed their independence under Nabopolassar in 626 BC, were subsequently at almost continual war with the Assyrians. In 614 BC, the Medes under Cyaxares destroyed the city of Asshur, and Nineveh shared the same fate two years later (612 BC) when it fell to the combined armies of Cyaxares and Nabopolassar. The last king of Assyria, a certain Ashur-uballit II, was able to rally some of the surviving Assyrian forces and retreat to Haran, which he made the capital for a short time. However, the Babylonians soon evicted him from the city, and with that, the Assyrians vanished from history (c. 609 BC).