THE figures here represented compose part of a large battle scene. The Assyrian has stormed the city, and the women and children left from the slaughter are being led away captive. The women are supposed to be tearing their hair, which falls down over their shoulders. The Assyrian soldier, with his pointed cap, has them in charge. Cattle are also being driven off. The city besieged is supposed to be Damascus. The slab upon which the picture is portrayed is in the British Museum.
We introduce together with this victorious scene the emblem of the great Assyrian deity, who was represented also upon page 152. But in that case he was consuming the enemy with his artillery, as he winged his way over the chariot of the King of Assyria. Within the sun the god is represented. His left hand is in repose, and the bow is out of action. It is the sign of victory accomplished. The right hand is uplifted in the act of blessing. He gives his benediction to the victorious host. The god is supposed to be Assur.
A very special interest attached to these monuments lies in their graphic realization of the words of the prophets of God uttered against Israel. They bear written upon them these unchangeable words: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Israel served false gods, and reaped from the servants of those gods shame, misery, and destruction. The god of the Assyrian lifted up his hand, as it were, to bless Israel’s destroyer and the destruction he had caused. Over and over again the warning was sent to Israel from Jehovah: Do not “the abominable thing that I hate,” but Israel would not hearken. Over and over again the call to repentance and to righteousness was made to Israel, but the people would pursue their own wicked ways right on to their own destruction.
The voice of these slabs utters a cry to us in our own land, and surely in the providence of God the slabs have been brought to light in our days, and set up in the great Museum of Britain. England―the highly-favored land―owes her present greatness and liberty to the possession by the people of the Word of God. But if our land pursues its course, and laughs that Word to scorn, or rejects it, as did God’s chosen people Israel, the day is at hand when England’s greatness will be laid low, and when her strength will have departed, and a fate, worse, if possible, than that which befell Israel, will be hers.