Assyrians

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At a glance

Ancestry and origins

Asshur is a son of Shem (Genesis 10:22), and the Table of Nations records that from Shinar “he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city” (Genesis 10:11-12). Assyria therefore begins as an offshoot of Nimrod’s Babel — the same imperial impulse, moved north.

For centuries they were one power among several. From about 900 BC the Neo-Assyrian kings built the ancient world’s first true empire, on a policy of terror and mass deportation: conquered peoples were uprooted and scattered so they could never form a nation again. That policy is what ended the northern kingdom of Israel.

Where they lived

The Tigris valley of northern Iraq. Nineveh, their greatest capital, was so large that Jonah describes it as “an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth” with more than 120,000 people “who do not know their right hand from their left” (Jonah 3:3; 4:11). Their gods were Asshur and Ishtar, and their palace reliefs — flaying, impalement, heads stacked at city gates — corroborate Nahum’s description of “the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder” (Nahum 3:1).

Timeline with Israel

Working with Israel

Assyria was never Israel’s ally, but it is the object of one of the most surprising mercies in Scripture. God sent Jonah to Nineveh precisely because He intended to spare it, which is what Jonah resented: “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster” (Jonah 4:2). The city repented — the largest recorded revival in the Old Testament, among a people who would later destroy Israel — and Jesus used it against His own generation: “The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here” (Matthew 12:41).

Standing against Israel

Assyria ended ten of the twelve tribes. The deportations of 733 and 722 BC removed Reuben, Gad, half-Manasseh, Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, Dan, Ephraim, and the rest of Manasseh from their land and scattered them through the empire; they did not return as tribes. 2 Kings 17 pauses the whole narrative to explain why: idolatry, high places, Asherah poles, child sacrifice, and refusal to hear the prophets.

Against Judah they came within a siege ramp of success. The Rabshakeh’s speech beneath the walls of Jerusalem, delivered in Hebrew so the men on the wall could hear it, is a masterpiece of psychological warfare — and it made one fatal mistake in listing the LORD among the gods of the nations Assyria had already beaten (2 Kings 18:33-35). Isaiah’s answer is God’s contempt for a tool that thinks it is the craftsman: “Shall the axe boast over him who hews with it?” (Isaiah 10:15).

How their story ends

Nahum’s short book is the obituary, written before the funeral. Babylon and the Medes destroyed Nineveh in 612 BC so completely that later Greek travelers walked past the mounds without knowing a capital had stood there. The empire that had erased nations was itself erased.

Christ connection

Assyria holds two truths together that are hard to hold at once. God really does use pagan empires as instruments of judgment on His own people — and He judges those instruments for the pride with which they do it. And His mercy is genuinely wider than His people’s comfort: the same God who let Assyria carry off Israel had already sent them a preacher, and spared them when they listened. Isaiah’s vision for the end pushes even further, seeing a highway from Egypt to Assyria and God saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance” (Isaiah 19:23-25). And it was in the deported territory of Zebulun and Naphtali — Galilee of the nations — that the light finally dawned (Isaiah 9:1-2; Matthew 4:14-16).

Key passages

• Genesis 10:11-12 — Nineveh built out from Shinar.
• Jonah 3:5-10; 4:2 — Nineveh repents, and Jonah explains why he ran.
• 2 Kings 17:5-23 — The fall of Samaria and the reasons for it.
• 2 Kings 18:13-19:37 — Sennacherib, the Rabshakeh, Hezekiah’s prayer, and the angel of the LORD.
• Isaiah 10:5-15 — “Assyria, the rod of my anger”; shall the axe boast over the one who hews with it?
• Nahum 3:1-7 — The bloody city laid waste.
• Isaiah 19:23-25 — “Assyria the work of my hands.”
• Matthew 12:41 — “The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment.”