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Rh ters to the enemies of their country; instead of being permitted to enjoy such despoliation of their neighbors' dominions. Only occasionally, even in the great imaginative passages of their writings, do we find anything which appears to favor the treatment of captives as freemen (Isa. 56:7; 61:1). The contrary seems to have been expected and encouraged (Isa. 14:2; 49:23, 24; 61:5). Nevertheless these men were all to be treated humanely. Anything in the nature of severity or unkindness was frowned upon by these ethical teachers who professed to speak for their God.

That the prophets knew what it usually meant for delicately reared people to be taken as captives of war and carried as slaves into foreign parts is painfully evident from their writings. One prophet speaks of the people of Egypt, upper and lower, being taken, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks stripped to their shame (Isa. 20:4). Another, in speaking of the fall and spoliation of Nineveh, pictures the city as a delicately reared woman who goes forth with her maids, dishonored and abased:

Another prophetic writer in similar strains speaks of Babylon as a woman who has fallen from her lofty estate to become a captive and a mill-wench:

—Isa. 47:1 ff.