Page 65 - Advanced Biblical Backgrounds Revised

Objectives…

1. Students should be able to describe the relationship between the Assyrian Background to the books
of 2 Kings 15-19, Isaiah 26-37, and the prophet Nahum in the areas of the location of settling,
government, religion, social, and commercial factors in the society.

2. The student should be able to carefully describe the Assyrian empire and how it treated those whom
it brought under subjugation.

3. The student should be able to describe how God used this empire to forward his plans for the
development of Israel.

The Lesson ...

Assyria (2500 BCE– 609 BCE)

Location
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Assyria, a kingdom of northern Mesopotamia, became the center of one of the greatest empires of the
ancient Middle East. It was located in what is now northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey.
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was an Iron Age Mesopotamian empire, in existence between 911 BC and 609
BC, and became the largest empire in the world up till that time.

The Assyrian empire became
extremely great and powerful with
Nineveh as its center, all the way until
its final destruction by the Chaldeans
and the Medes. Nineveh was located
in a very desirable place, east of the
Tigris River, in a very fertile plain.
Today the ancient ruins are located
just opposite the present-day city of
Mosul. The size of Nineveh is revealed
in the Bible, in Jonah 3:3 and 4:11 (A 3
days journey in breadth with over
120,000 people). The classical writers
describe Nineveh as being over 60
miles around the city walls. The city of
Nineveh is described in Genesis 10:11

99 Information from this section was taken from https://www.bible-history.com/biblestudy/nineveh.html

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