What did the conquering empires do to the Jews in the land of Israel?
The conquering empires emptied the land of Israel of most of its Jewish population. Babylon, under Nebuchadnezzar in 606 B.C., destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem and took the Jews captive east to Babylon. Later, the Medes and Persians permitted a remnant to return and rebuild the Temple.
Les explains that this was common to the activities of those conquering empires: they literally emptied the land of Israel of most of the Jews and took them out to the east to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar came in 606 B.C., destroyed the Temple, and Jerusalem and Israel went into captivity. Seventy years later, the next empire, the Medes and Persians, under King Cyrus, gave a decree that the Jews were free to return to their homeland and rebuild the Temple. However, most of the Jews in Babylon did not go back—only 44,000 out of several million.