slave should insistently say, ‘I really love my master, my wife and my sons, I do not want to go out as one set free,’ then his master must bring him near to the true God and must bring him up against the door or the doorpost; and his master must pierce his ear through with an awl, and he must be his slave to time indefinite.” (Ex. 21:2, 5, 6) Paul speaks to non-Jews in the Thessalonian congregation about the voluntary shift of devotion, when they became Christians, from slavery to idols “to slave for a living and true God.”—1 Thess. 1:9.

JESUS’ EXCLUSIVE DEVOTION TO GOD

Jesus appreciated the exclusive position of his Father and rendered him exclusive devotion, both when he was in heaven and when he was on earth, as shown in Philippians 2:5-8. He pointed out that the most important commandment in the Law demanded wholehearted love of God. (Matt. 22:37) Moreover, Jesus manifested exclusive devotion to Jehovah’s name and emphasized the fact that his disciples should have the same attitude. In the prayer he taught his disciples, he started off with the words, “Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified.” (Matt. 6:9) This devotion in Jesus was coupled with burning zeal, as manifested at his cleansing of the temple, where he fulfilled the prophecy, “The zeal for your house will eat me up.” (John 2:17; Ps. 69:9) Nowhere is Jesus’ exclusive devotion toward his Father exemplified more than in what is written of him at 1 Corinthians 15:24-28, where it says that, after his heavenly kingdom rule puts down all authority, power and all enemies, he turns over the kingdom to the Father and subjects himself to Him so that “God may be all things to everyone.”

EXECRATION

A severe or even violent denunciation of that which is viewed as detestable and worthy of cursing. In Hebrew the word qa·vavʹ conveys this idea. It literally means “to cut into,” but in a figurative sense means “to malign or speak with cutting words,” and hence “to execrate.” This word appears only in the account of King Balak’s futile efforts to get the prophet Balaam to execrate the nation of Israel and thus present that nation before God as worthy of his curse.—Num. 22:11, 17; 23:11, 13, 25, 27; 24:10.

The word na·qavʹ also appears in this same account, as well as in many other texts. Literally, it means “to pierce” or “perforate” (2 Ki. 18:21; Hab. 3:14), but it is used in a figurative sense to mean “to speak abusively of” or “to execrate.” (Lev. 24:11, 16; Job 3:8; 5:3; Prov. 11:26; 24:24) An imprecation, that is, an invocation of evil from a divine source, is not always stated but may be implied.—See CURSE; MALEDICTION.

EXECUTION, EXECUTIONER

For laws, commandments and commissions to have vitality and worth, they must be legally enforced. Execution usually has to do with enforcing the penalties, especially the death penalty, imposed for violation of laws. Supreme Law not only has a Lawgiver, it also has a Law Enforcer: “Jehovah is our Judge, Jehovah is our Statute-giver, Jehovah is our King.” “One there is that is lawgiver and judge.” (Isa. 33:22; Jas. 4:12) So Jehovah himself is an executioner of judgment and vengeance upon violators of His law.—Ex. 12:12; Deut. 10:17, 18; Ezek. 25:11-17; 2 Thess. 1:6-9; Jude 14, 15.

Jehovah also delegated certain power of execution to others. For example: “Your blood of your souls shall I ask back. . . . From the hand of each one who is his brother, shall I ask back the soul of man. Anyone shedding man’s blood, by man will his own blood be shed, for in God’s image he made man.” (Gen. 9:5, 6) In this regard certain responsibilities as executioner fell upon the “avenger of blood.” (Num. 35:19) (See AVENGER OF BLOOD.) Depending upon the circumstances, the authority as executioner was sometimes invested in the priests of Israel (Num. 5:15-31), or in the entire congregation, with the eyewitnesses taking the lead in executing an offender. (Lev. 24:14-16; Deut. 17:2-7) The power of execution was also in the hands of the judges and kings, or someone whom they appointed.—Judg. 8:20, 21; 2 Sam. 1:15; 1 Chron. 14:16; 2 Ki. 9:6-9; 10:24-28; Jer. 21:12; 22:3.

Ancient rulers were surrounded by trusted bodyguards to whom execution of their master’s edicts could be entrusted. Potiphar was one who held this position. (Gen. 37:36; 41:12) It was one of Herod’s body guardsmen who beheaded John the Baptist.—Mark 6:27.

Execution of the death penalty in Israel was either by stoning or by the sword. (Lev. 20:2; 2 Sam. 1:15) Jehovah’s Messianic King, the Lord Jesus Christ, and other loyal heavenly associates of his are legal executioners, authorized as such by “the Judge of all the earth.”—Gen. 18:25; Ps. 149:6-9; Rev. 12:7-9; 19:11-16; 20:1-3.

EXILE

Expulsion from one’s own native land or home by authoritative decree. Cain, who killed his brother Abel, was cursed in banishment from the ground to become a wanderer and a fugitive in the earth. He had been a farmer, but the ground thereafter would not respond to his cultivation.—Gen. 4:2, 3, 11-14.

Israel was told that Jehovah would lead the nation away into exile if they became unfaithful to the covenant he made with them through Moses. (Deut. 28:36, 37, 64; 29:28) So God was really the Authority who decreed the exile of his people in several instances, although he allowed the armies of other nations to be his instruments. These occasions are: (1) Israel’s exile by the hand of the Assyrians (2 Ki. 15:29; 18:9-12); (2) Judah’s exile in Babylon (2 Ki. 25:8-11, 21); (3) the Jewish exile at the hands of the Romans.—Luke 21:20-24.

ISRAEL

Tiglath-pileser III took inhabitants of Naphtali into exile in Assyria before Israelite King Pekah’s rule ended in 758 B.C.E. Reubenites, Gadites and those from the eastern half tribe of Manasseh were also carried off by the king of Assyria, apparently at the same time. (1 Chron. 5:4-6, 26) Shalmaneser V later besieged Samaria, and after three years, in 740 B.C.E., either he or his successor, Sargon II, deported great numbers of the inhabitants and “brought people from Babylon and Cuthah and Avva and Hamath and Sepharvaim and had them dwell in the cities of Samaria instead of the sons of Israel.”—2 Ki. 17:5, 6, 24.

JUDAH

In 617 B.C.E., King Nebuchadnezzar took the royal court and the foremost men of Judah into exile at Babylon. (2 Ki. 24:11-16) About ten years later, in 607 B.C.E., at the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon, Nebuzar-adan, the chief of the Babylonian bodyguard, took most of the remaining ones and deserters of the Jews with him to Babylon, from which exile only a mere remnant returned seventy years later.—2 Ki. 25:11; Jer. 39:9; Isa. 10:21, 22; see CAPTIVITY.

After the fall of Babylon many Jews did not return to their homeland, and the dispersion therefore continued. In the time of Ahasuerus (Xerxes I, king of Persia who ruled from India to Ethiopia, over 127 jurisdictional districts), Haman, in making an indictment of them, said: “There is one certain people scattered and separated among the peoples in all the jurisdictional districts of your realm.”—Esther 1:1; 3:8.

IN THE FIRST CENTURY C.E.

In the first century C.E. there were settlements of Jews in Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, Rome and Babylon, as well as other cities. (Acts 17:1, 16,