Taken in war, seem anciently to have been looked upon as justly liable to death, and hence to any treatment less dreadful than death. Their necks were trodden upon, Jos 10:24, in token of abject subjection, which illustrates Ps 110:1. They were sold into servitude, like Joseph. They were mutilated, like Samson, or Adonizedek. They were stripped of all clothing, and driven in crowds to adorn the victor's triumph. Large numbers of them were selected, often by a measuring line, 2Sa 8:2, and slain, 2Ch 25:12. This was sometimes done with designed cruelty, 2Sa 12:31; 1Ch 20:3. The Romans in some cases bound a living captive to a dead body, and left them to perish together; a practice which may be applied to illustrate the apostle's cry, "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Ro 7:24.

CAPTIVES. The treatment of persons taken in war among ancient nations throws great light upon many passages of Scripture. The eastern conqueror often stripped his unhappy captives naked, shaved their heads, and made them travel in that condition, exposed to the burning heat of a vertical sun by day, and the chilling cold of the night. Such barbarous treatment was to modest women the height of cruelty and indignity; especially to those who had been educated in softness and elegance, who had figured in all the superfluities of ornamental dress, and whose faces had hardly ever been exposed to the sight of man. The Prophet Isaiah mentions this as the hardest part of the sufferings in which female captives are involved: "The Lord will expose their nakedness." The daughter of Zion had indulged in all the softness of oriental luxury; but the offended Jehovah should cause her unrelenting enemies to drag her forth from her secret chambers into the view of an insolent soldiery; strip her of her ornaments, in which she so greatly delighted; take away her splendid and costly garments, discover her nakedness, and compel her to travel in that miserable plight to a far distant country, a helpless captive, the property of a cruel lord. Arrived in the land of their captivity, captives were often purchased at a very low price. The Prophet Joel complains of the contemptuous cheapness in which the people of Israel were held by those who made them captives: "And they have cast lots for my people; and have given a boy for a harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink." The custom of casting lots for the captives taken in war appears to have prevailed both among the Jews and the Greeks. The same allusion occurs in the prophecy of Obadiah: "Strangers carried away captive his forces, and foreigners entered into his gates, and cast lots upon Jerusalem," Ob 1:11. With respect to the Greeks, we have an instance in Tryphiodorus: