King James Version · The Persian return
Additions to Esther 14
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is.
1Queen also, being in fear of , resorted unto : 2And laid away her apparel, and put on the garments of anguish and : and instead of precious ointments, she covered her head with and dung, and she humbled her body greatly, and all the places of her joy she filled with her torn hair. 3And she unto of Israel, saying, O my , thou only art our King: help me, desolate woman, which have no helper but thee: 4For my danger is in mine hand. 5From my youth up I have heard in the tribe of my family that thou, O , tookest Israel from among all people, and our fathers from all their predecessors, for a perpetual , and thou hast performed whatsoever thou didst promise them. 6And now we have before thee: therefore hast thou given us into the hands of our , 7Because we their gods: O , thou art . 8Nevertheless it satisfieth them not, that we are in bitter : but they have stricken hands with their idols, 9That they will abolish the thing that thou with thy hast ordained, and destroy thine , and stop the of them that thee, and quench the of thy house, and of thine , 10And open the mouths of the heathen to set forth the of the idols, and to magnify a king for ever. 11O , give not thy sceptre unto them that be nothing, and let them not laugh at our fall; but turn their device upon themselves, and make him an example, that hath begun this against us. 12Remember, O , make thyself known in time of our affliction, and give me boldness, O King of the nations, and of all . 13Give me eloquent speech in my before the lion: turn to hate him that fighteth against us, that there may be an end of him, and of all that are likeminded to him: 14But us with thine hand, and help me that am desolate, and which have no other help but thee. 15Thou knowest all things, O ; thou knowest that I hate the of the unrighteous, and abhor the bed of the , and of all the heathen. 16Thou knowest my necessity: for I abhor the sign of my high estate, which is upon mine head in the days wherein I shew myself, and that I abhor it as a menstruous rag, and that I wear it not when I am private by myself. 17And that thine handmaid hath not eaten at ’s table, and that I have not greatly esteemed the king’s feast, nor drunk the of the drink . 18Neither had thine handmaid any joy since the day that I was brought hither to this present, but in thee, O of . 19O thou mighty above all, hear the voice of the forlorn and us out of the hands of the mischievous, and me out of my fear.
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.