Held Captive

Hoshea was the last king of the northern kingdom of Israel. He had to pay tribute every year to the king of Assyria. Then he stopped paying and secretly sent messengers to the king of Egypt for help.

The king of Assyria found out. He shut Hoshea up and bound him in prison. Then he besieged Samaria for three years, captured it, and carried the people of Israel away to Assyria. That was the end of the northern kingdom.

Manasseh became king of Judah at twelve and reigned fifty-five years, longer than any other king of Judah. The Bible says he did great evil: he rebuilt the altars to other gods, put an idol in the temple, and shed much innocent blood.

2 Chronicles tells that the Assyrian army took Manasseh captive in chains and carried him to Babylon. In his distress he humbled himself greatly and prayed. God heard him and brought him back to Jerusalem to his kingdom. Back home, he removed the foreign gods and the idol from the temple and restored the altar of God.

Jehoahaz became king of Judah at twenty-three, after his father Josiah was killed in battle by Pharaoh Necho of Egypt. He reigned only three months.

Pharaoh Necho put him in chains at Riblah, so that he could not reign in Jerusalem, and placed a heavy tax on the land. Necho made Jehoahaz’s brother king in his place and gave him a new name, Jehoiakim. Jehoahaz was taken to Egypt and died there. He never came home.

Jehoiachin became king of Judah at eighteen. Three months later the army of Babylon besieged Jerusalem. He surrendered to Nebuchadnezzar with his mother, his servants, his officials and his officers. He was taken to Babylon with the treasures of the temple and thousands of captives.

He spent thirty-seven years in prison in Babylon. Then a new king, Evil-merodach, came to the throne and released him. He spoke kindly to him, gave him a seat above the other captive kings, took off his prison clothes, and let him eat at the king’s table for the rest of his life, with a daily allowance.

2 Kings and Jeremiah both end with this release. They give the day slightly differently: the twenty-seventh of the month in 2 Kings, the twenty-fifth in Jeremiah.

Zedekiah was the last king of Judah. Nebuchadnezzar put him on the throne after taking his nephew Jehoiachin to Babylon. Zedekiah later rebelled. Babylon besieged Jerusalem until the food ran out. Zedekiah and his soldiers broke out by night and fled, but they were caught near Jericho.

He was brought before Nebuchadnezzar at Riblah. His sons were killed in front of him. Then his eyes were put out, he was bound in bronze chains, and he was taken to Babylon. Jeremiah adds that he was kept in prison until the day he died.

John the Baptist told Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee, that it was not lawful for him to take his brother Philip’s wife, Herodias. Herod put John in prison.

In prison John heard about what Yeshua was doing. He sent two of his disciples to ask him: “Art thou he that cometh, or look we for another?” Yeshua told them to go back and tell John what they had seen: the blind see, the lame walk, the poor have good news preached to them. After they left, Yeshua said that no one born of women was greater than John.

At Herod’s birthday party, Herodias’s daughter danced, and Herod swore to give her whatever she asked. Her mother told her to ask for John’s head on a platter. Herod was sorry, but because of his oath and his guests he sent and had John beheaded in the prison. John’s disciples came, took his body, and buried it, then went and told Yeshua.

On the night of the Passover meal, Yeshua went with his disciples to a garden across the Kidron valley. Judas came with a band of soldiers and officers from the chief priests, carrying lanterns, torches and weapons. They seized Yeshua and bound him.

He was taken bound to Annas, then to Caiaphas the high priest, and questioned through the night. In the morning the council bound him again and handed him over to Pilate, the Roman governor. Pilate had him scourged and handed him over to be crucified.

Earlier, Yeshua had told a parable about the day of judgment in which the King says to those on his right: “I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”

Barabbas was in prison with others who had taken part in an uprising in Jerusalem and had committed murder in it. At the Passover, the governor used to release one prisoner chosen by the crowd.

Pilate offered the crowd a choice: Barabbas or Yeshua. The chief priests stirred up the crowd to ask for Barabbas. Pilate, wanting to satisfy them, released Barabbas, the man in prison for insurrection and murder, and handed Yeshua over to be crucified.

After Pentecost, the apostles preached and healed in the temple courts in Jerusalem, and crowds gathered. The high priest and his party were filled with jealousy. They arrested the apostles and put them in the public prison.

During the night an angel opened the prison doors and told them to go and speak in the temple. In the morning the council sent for them, but the officers found the prison locked and the guards standing at the doors, and no one inside. The apostles were found teaching in the temple. They were brought before the council, beaten, and ordered not to speak in Yeshua’s name. They left rejoicing that they had been counted worthy to suffer for the Name.

King Herod Agrippa killed James the brother of John with the sword. When he saw that this pleased the people, he arrested Peter too, during the days of Unleavened Bread. He put him in prison under four squads of four soldiers each, planning to bring him out for trial after the Passover. Meanwhile the church prayed earnestly for him.

On the night before the trial, Peter was asleep between two soldiers, bound with two chains, with guards at the door. A light shone in the cell, and an angel struck Peter on the side and woke him. The chains fell off his hands. He followed the angel past the first and second guard to the iron gate of the city, which opened by itself. Then the angel left him.

Peter went to the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where many were praying. A servant girl named Rhoda was so happy to hear his voice that she ran to tell the others and left him standing at the gate. He told them how the Lord had brought him out, and then went to another place.

In the Roman city of Philippi, Paul and Silas freed a slave girl from a spirit that let her tell fortunes. Her owners lost their income and dragged Paul and Silas before the city rulers. The rulers had them stripped and beaten with rods, then thrown into prison. The jailer put them in the inner prison and locked their feet in the stocks.

At midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns, and the other prisoners were listening. Suddenly an earthquake shook the prison. All the doors opened and everyone’s chains came loose. The jailer woke up, saw the doors open, and drew his sword to kill himself, thinking the prisoners had escaped. Paul shouted: “Do thyself no harm: for we are all here.”

The jailer fell trembling before them and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” That same night he washed their wounds, he and his household were baptized, and he brought them into his house and gave them food.

In the morning the rulers sent word to let them go quietly. Paul refused. They were Roman citizens, he said, beaten publicly without a trial; let the rulers come and bring them out themselves. The rulers were afraid when they heard they were Romans, came and apologised, and asked them to leave the city.

When Paul came back to Jerusalem, a crowd in the temple accused him of bringing Gentiles into the holy place, and tried to kill him. Roman soldiers rescued him and bound him with two chains. The next day the Roman commander learned of a plot by more than forty men to kill Paul, and sent him by night under heavy guard to Caesarea, the seat of the Roman governor.

At Caesarea, Governor Felix heard the case but did not decide it. He hoped Paul would pay him a bribe, and kept him in custody for two years. When a new governor, Festus, wanted to send him to Jerusalem for trial, Paul used his right as a Roman citizen: “I appeal unto Caesar.” King Agrippa heard him too, and said he could have been set free if he had not appealed.

Paul was sent to Rome by ship with other prisoners, under a centurion named Julius. On the way they were caught in a storm for two weeks and wrecked on the island of Malta. All 276 people on board reached land alive. In Rome, Paul was allowed to live in his own rented house, with a soldier guarding him, for two whole years. He welcomed everyone who came to see him. The book of Acts ends there.

Paul wrote several of his letters while he was a prisoner: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon, and his last letter, 2 Timothy. In them he calls himself “the prisoner of Christ Jesus” and “an ambassador in chains.”

He writes that his chains became known to the whole Roman palace guard, and that seeing him in chains made other believers bolder. He asks his readers to “remember my bonds.” In prison he met a slave named Onesimus, who had left his master Philemon. Onesimus became a believer, and Paul sent him back to Philemon with a letter asking him to receive him as a brother.

In 2 Timothy, written near the end of his life, Paul asks Timothy to come before winter and bring the cloak he left at Troas, and his books and parchments. Only Luke is with him. At his first hearing no one stood with him. He thanks a man named Onesiphorus, who searched for him in Rome and was not ashamed of his chain.

Paul was not alone in prison. In his letters he names several “fellow-prisoners”: Aristarchus, a man from Thessalonica who travelled with him; Epaphras, who brought the gospel to the town of Colossae; and Andronicus and Junias, two relatives of Paul who were believers before he was.

John writes that he was on the island of Patmos “for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.” Patmos is a small rocky island in the Aegean Sea, off the coast of what is now Turkey.

There, on the Lord’s day, he heard a voice like a trumpet telling him to write what he saw in a book and send it to seven churches in Asia. What he wrote is the book of Revelation.