BABYLONIAN EXILE, or CAPTIV ITY. It seems to have been part of the state craft of the ancient Assyrians to remove the people of conquered nations and plant them in unoccupied parts of the dominion, as far dis tant as possible from the home country of the victims. This custom grew out of civil and geographical conditions. The degree of na tional intercourse requisite for maintaining a proper ascendency over the subjugated nation could not be maintained if they were allowed to remain in their own land. Consequently, deportation was necessary — a process which has come to be designated in our language by the word captivity. Anciently, deported na tions were not treated with that cruelty we are in the habit of associating with the captive. The captivity of the Jews, who are more espe cially to be treated in this article, demands the preceding remarks in order to aid in a proper understanding of the frequent notices we find in the Scriptures of the consequence to which these people attained in their foreign residences.
There are two Babylonish captivities of the Jews, having their beginning at different times, although their endings were synchronous. In the civil dissensions following the death of Saul and culminating at the death of Solomon, the tribes north of the mountains of Ephraim and those east of Jordan separated from the rest, leaving Judah and Benjamin in the nat urally fortified province of the south. To the north of the revolted tribes lay the kingdom of Syria, then powerful and extensive. Syria had an old feud with Israel ever since David had made Damascus, the Syrian capital, tribu tary to himself. Rezon had regained the under Solomon, but was can adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon.). The attention of Syria was now turned to the defenseless condition of the revolted tribes. They had no longer the fortifications and fastnesses from which David had sallied forth to the northern plains at the foot of the Anti-Lebanon. Judah had, meanwhile, made a treaty, in the reign of Asa, her third King, with the Syrian power, who, by his counsel and stratagem, had been induced to break a former league with Israel (I Kings xv). Judah also, fearing inroads from the north, had built two new fortifica tions in the passes of Benjamin (Geba and Mizpah), and used all her arts to keep herself in favor with Syria and on the other hand turned her pampered ally against the revolted and unprotected tribes at the north. Israel, tired at length of the continual exposures to Syrian invasion and exasperated at the im munity and prosperity of the rival Judah, formed a conspiracy with Syria (during the reign of Pekah in Israel and Ahaz in Judah) against her southern antagonist. In the emer
gency Judah appealed to the Assyrian power and Tiglath Pileser came against Israel (733), carried captive a portion of its inhabitants, and then marched upon Syria, slew its king, sub dued its capital and absorbed it into the Assy rian empire, from which it reappears only in the time of Alexander the Great. The suc cessor of Pileser, exasperated by an attempted conspiracy of Hoshea with the King of Egypt, took Samaria and subdued Israel to a tributary relation, taking away to Babylon the people whom Pileser had left in the first deportation. Thus was accomplished the first captivity of the numerically most powerful branch of the divided house of Israel (721 B.c.). They were first in the subjugation to foreign power from purely geographical considerations.
A little more than a hundred years after, Judah, from her mountain fastnesses, fol lowed Israel into the Assyrian empire, in the second great Babylonish captivity. Disregard ing some chronological differences, Judah seems to have been progressively carried into captiv ity, like Israel, by at least two, and perhaps three, successive deportations. The first was 598 a.c., and was probably made with the direct object of colonizing the city of Nineveh, which the Assyrian monarch was then endeavoring to restore. The second was in the reign of Zedekiah. Judah had for three successive reigns been heavily tributary to Assyria. Zede kiah rebelled against the tribute and, like Israel, further exasperated her master by call ing upon Egypt in her extremity. In revenge, Nebuchadnezzar burnt the temple and city, put out the eyes of Zedekiah and led away the people to Babylon, and so ended the Jewish kingdom (588 a.c.). When, 70 years after the second captivity, the permission to re turn was given, only a very small part of the Jewish people were in a condition to desire a removal, having become thoroughly naturalized in their foreign dwellings; and even if they had desired it, it would have been only a return to a Medo-Persian satrapy, not to the glory of their ancient kingdom and temple-worship. See DANIEL; EZEKIEL; EZRA; JEWS.
The term "Babylonish Captivity') is fre quently applied by writers of Church history to the residence of the Popes at Avignon for nearly 70 years.
Ewald, (The History of Is rael,> translated by Martineau, Vols. IV, V (4th, ed., London 1878-86) ; Cheyne, 'Jewish Life after the Exile) (New York 1899); Kent, 'A History of the Jewish People) (New York 1899); Torrey,