Around 588 b.c., Assyrian infantry march under a blistering sun along the Mediterranean coast to receive the surrender of coastal cities. Envoys from Tyre and Sidon prostrate themselves in the hot sand, offering their lands, cattle, and daughters to avoid slaughter. Fear spreads through every fortified town as foreign troops construct watchtowers and seize local granaries. Soldiers wearing heavy bronze armor sweat in the coastal humidity while marching drafted citizens away from their ancestral farms. The oppressive heat matches the terror of people watching their stone boundaries crumbled by imperial sledgehammers.
Holofernes commands the invasion force on behalf of Nebuchadnezzar. Every Gentile city along the coast submits to foreign rule. He marches into the Jezreel Valley and camps between Geba and Scythopolis. The coastal kings surrender without a fight to save their lives and properties. They supply wheat, barley, and sheep worth thousands of silver shekels, equaling over twenty years of a laborer's wages. Holofernes accepts their submission but strips away their religious independence. His engineers chop down every timber shrine and smash every stone altar along the sea. Imperial law requires every conquered nation to worship Nebuchadnezzar alone as the supreme god. The army halts in the plain for thirty days to stockpile grain and repair iron wagon tires.
The iron axe cutting through cedar wood is the true engine of imperial conquest. Physical submission is never enough for a conqueror who demands the complete eradication of local identity. Men will surrender their wealth and freedom to preserve their skin, only to watch their deepest beliefs leveled to dirt. Totalitarian power requires the destruction of every competing loyalty so that the ruler stands alone as the supreme authority over daily life.
A man who trades his principles for safety will eventually lose both to the tyrant he bribed.
The timber from the felled shrines was burned as firewood in the Assyrian campstoves across the valley. What remained of the coastal altars was nothing more than shattered limestone buried under military supply roads.