were entirely devoted to destruction, as, for example, Jericho, the firstfruits of the conquest. (Josh. 6:17, 21) When capturing other cities not devoted to destruction, the Israelites, unlike the pagan nations, were not allowed to rape the women. If they desired a captive woman for a wife, certain requirements had to be met first.—Lam. 5:11; Num. 31:9-19, 26, 27; Deut. 21:10-14.

However, when enemy nations came up against the Israelites, Jehovah sometimes allowed his people to be carried off captive when they had been unfaithful to him. (2 Chron. 21:16, 17; 28:5, 17; 29:9) The most notable examples of this were in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E., when thousands of Israelites were exiled as captives by the Assyrian and Babylonian World Powers. (See CAPTIVITY.) Ahijah and Jeremiah foretold this coming national disaster. (1 Ki. 14:15; Jer. 15:2) Moses too had warned that their sons and daughters would “go off into captivity” as a penalty for disobedience to Jehovah, adding that, if they repented, such captives would in time return. (Deut. 28:41; 30:3) Solomon foresaw captivity resulting from unfaithfulness and he prayed for Jehovah to release the captives if they repented.—1 Ki. 8:46-52; 2 Chron. 6:36-39; see also 2 Chronicles 30:9; Ezra 9:7.

The treatment of captives varied a great deal, depending on many circumstances. Sometimes they were permitted to remain in their own land on condition that they pay tribute and not rebel against their new master. (Gen. 14:1-4; 2 Sam. 8:5, 6; 2 Ki. 17:1-4) A conquered monarch was sometimes permitted to continue reigning as a vassal king, or he might be replaced. (2 Ki. 23:34; 24:1, 17) In some instances great numbers of captives were put to death, like the 10,000 who were thrown down from a crag so “they, one and all, burst apart.” (2 Chron. 25:12) Some conquerors were very cruel and fiendish in their treatment of captives, hanging them “by just their hand” (Lam. 5:12), cutting off their noses and ears (Ezek. 23:25), blinding them with red-hot irons or boring out their eyes with spears or daggers (Judg. 16:21; 1 Sam. 11:2; Jer. 52:11), or “slitting open the pregnant women” of a captured town. (Amos 1:13) The sadistic Assyrians, particularly noted for their extreme cruelty, are depicted in monuments as tying captives down and then skinning them alive.

Captives were often led away to forced labor (2 Sam. 12:29-31; 1 Chron. 20:3), taken into slavery, or sold as chattel. (1 Sam. 30:1, 2; 2 Ki. 5:2; Isa. 14:3, 4) Often conquerors delighted in roping captives together around the neck or head (compare Isaiah 52:2), or binding them in fetters (2 Ki. 25:7), and leading them off “naked and barefoot, and with buttocks stripped,” to their humiliation and shame.—Isa. 20:4.

Release and return of the Jewish captives was the happy theme of many prophecies. (Isa. 49:24, 25; Jer. 29:14; 46:27; Ezek. 39:28; Hos. 6:11; Joel 3:1; Amos 9:14; Zeph. 3:20) The psalmist also looked toward the time when “Jehovah gathers back the captive ones of his people.” (Ps. 14:7; 53:6; 85:1; 126:1, 4) Many of these prophecies were fulfilled in a miniature way from and after 537 B.C.E., when a remnant of the captives that had come under control of the Persian Empire began streaming back to Jerusalem to rebuild the city and its great temple. (Ezra 2:1; 3:8; 8:35; Neh. 1:2, 3; 7:6; 8:17) Certain enemies of Jehovah’s people were especially mentioned as destined for captivity themselves, nations such as Babylon (Isa. 46:1, 2; Jer. 50:1, 2), Egypt (Jer. 43:11, 12; Ezek. 30:17, 18) and Moab.—Jer. 48:46.

Jesus quotes from Isaiah 61:1, 2, applying it to himself as sent by Jehovah “to preach a release to the captives and a recovery of sight to the blind.” (Luke 4:16-21) The apostle Paul draws illustrations from the ancient practice of conquerors’ taking captives. (Eph. 4:8; 2 Cor. 10:5) In the last book of the Bible the principle is set forth: “If anyone is for leading into captivity, he goes away into captivity.”—Rev. 13:10.

CAPTIVITY

In Biblical history a number of different captivities are mentioned. (Num. 21:29; 2 Chron. 29:9; Isa. 46:2; Ezek. 30:17, 18; Dan. 11:33; Nah. 3:10; Rev. 13:10; see CAPTIVE.) However, “The Captivity” generally refers to the great exiling of Jews from the Promised Land in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E. by the Assyrian and Babylonian World Powers, and is also called “the Exile” and “the deportation.”—Ezra 6:21; Matt. 1:17.

Jeremiah, Ezekiel and other prophets warned of this great calamity in statements like these: “Whoever is for the captivity, to the captivity!” “As for you, O Pashhur, and all the inhabitants of your house, you will go into captivity; and to Babylon you will come.” “There is this pronouncement against Jerusalem and all the house of Israel . . . ‘Into exile, into captivity they will go.’” (Jer. 15:2; 20:6; Ezek. 12:10, 11) Later, concerning the return from Babylonian captivity, Nehemiah (7:6) relates: “These are the sons of the jurisdictional district who came up out of the captivity of the exiled people whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had taken into exile and who later returned to Jerusalem and to Judah.”—See also Ezra 2:1; 3:8; 8:35; Nehemiah 1:2, 3; 8:17.

Assyria, it seems, was the first to introduce the policy of uprooting and removing the entire populations of captured towns from their homeland and repopulating the territory with captives from other parts of the empire. This deportation policy of Assyria was enforced against not only the Jews, for when Damascus, the capital of Syria, fell under the crushing military onslaught of this second world power, its people were banished to Kir, as foretold by the prophet Amos. (2 Ki. 16:8, 9; Amos 1:5) The practice had a twofold effect: It discouraged the few remaining ones from subversive activity; and the surrounding nations that may have been friendly with those taken captive were less inclined to give aid and assistance to the new foreign element brought in from distant places.

In both the northern ten-tribe kingdom of Israel and the southern two-tribe kingdom of Judah, the root cause leading up to captivity was the same: abandonment of true worship of Jehovah in favor of false gods. (Deut. 28:15, 62-68; 2 Ki. 17:7-18; 21:10-15) Jehovah, for his part, continually sent his prophets to warn them both but to no avail. (2 Ki. 17:13) None of the ten-tribe kingdom of Israel’s kings ever made a complete purge of the false worship instituted by that nation’s first king, Jeroboam. Judah, her sister kingdom to the S, failed to heed both Jehovah’s direct warnings and the example of the captivity into which Israel fell. (Jer. 3:6-10) The inhabitants of both kingdoms eventually were carried away into exile, each nation in more than one principal deportation.

BEGINNING OF THE EXILE

During the reign of Israelite King Pekah at Samaria (c. 778-758 B.C.E.), Assyrian King Pul (apparently his more official title was Tiglath-pileser III) came against Israel, captured a large section in the N and deported its inhabitants to eastern parts of his empire. (2 Ki. 15:29) This same monarch also captured territory E of the Jordan and from that area “he took into exile those of the Reubenites and of the Gadites and of the half tribe of Manasseh and brought them to Halah and Habor and Hara and the river Gozan to continue until this day.”—1 Chron. 5:26.

When Samaria fell to the Assyrians in 740 B.C.E., thus ending the ten-tribe kingdom, its inhabitants were taken into exile “in Halah and in Habor at the river Gozan and in the cities of the Medes.” This was because, as the Scriptures say, “they had not