King James Version · The Persian return
1 Esdras 3
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is.
1Now when Darius reigned, he made a great feast unto all his subjects, and unto all his household, and unto all the princes of and , 2And to all the governors and captains and lieutenants that were under him, from India unto , of an hundred twenty and seven provinces. 3And when they had eaten and drunken, and being satisfied were gone home, then Darius the king went into his bedchamber, and slept, and soon after awaked. 4Then three young men, that were of the guard that kept the king’s body, spake one to another; 5Let every one of us speak a sentence: he that shall overcome, and whose sentence shall seem wiser than the others, unto him shall the king Darius give great gifts, and great things in token of victory: 6As, to be clothed in purple, to drink in gold, and to sleep upon gold, and a chariot with bridles of gold, and an headtire of fine linen, and a chain about his neck: 7And he shall sit next to Darius because of his , and shall be called Darius his cousin. 8And then every one wrote his sentence, sealed it, and laid it under king Darius his pillow; 9And said that, when the king is , some will give him ; and of whose side the king and the three princes of shall judge that his sentence is the wisest, to him shall the victory be given, as was appointed. 10The first wrote, is the strongest. 11The second wrote, The king is strongest. 12The third wrote, Women are strongest: but above all things Truth beareth away the victory. 13Now when the king was up, they took their writings, and them unto him, and so he read them: 14And sending forth he called all the princes of and , and the governors, and the captains, and the lieutenants, and the chief officers; 15And sat him down in the royal seat of ; and were read before them. 16And he said, Call the young men, and they shall declare their own sentences. So they were called, and came in. 17And he said unto them, Declare unto us concerning . Then began the first, who had spoken of the strength of ; 18And he said thus, O ye men, how exceeding strong is ! it causeth all men to err that drink it: 19It maketh of the king and of child to be all one; of the bondman and of the freeman, of man and of the rich: 20It turneth also every thought into jollity and mirth, so that a man remembereth neither sorrow nor debt: 21And it maketh every rich, so that a man remembereth neither king nor governor; and it maketh to speak all things by : 22And when they are in their , they forget their love both to friends and brethren, and a little after draw out : 23But when they are from the , they remember not what they have done. 24O ye men, is not the strongest, that enforceth to do thus? And when he had so spoken, he held his peace.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · The Persian return, 539 BC to 332 BC ›
Persia takes Babylon and reverses its policy, sending exiled peoples home to rebuild their temples. Judah returns as a small province, rebuilding under imperial permission rather than independence.
- Persia
- The largest empire the world had yet seen, from the Indus to the Aegean, run through provinces, a royal road, and a postal system. Its policy on conquered peoples was to send them home and fund their temples, in exchange for loyalty and prayers for the king. The Cyrus Cylinder states the policy in Cyrus's own words, and Ezra opens with the same policy applied to Judah.
- Judah
- A small, poor province called Yehud, a fraction of the old kingdom, with a rebuilt temple that made the people who remembered the first one weep. No king, and no prospect of one. Leadership passes to priests and scribes, which shapes everything afterward.
- Greece
- Persia and Greece collide at Marathon and Salamis, Persia loses, and Athens spends the following decades on the Parthenon, tragedy, and Socrates. Herodotus writes the first history in order to explain that war. Then Plato and Aristotle, whose vocabulary the church will still be using at Nicaea eight centuries later.
- Further afield
- Rome throws out its kings and becomes a republic. In India and China this is the age of the Buddha's early followers and of Confucian teaching taking hold. More of what the world still thinks with was invented in this era than in almost any other.