World English Bible · The Persian return
Esther 3
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After these things King promoted the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and advanced him, and set his seat above all the princes who were with him. All the king's servants who were in the king's and paid homage to , for the king had so commanded concerning him. But didn't or pay him homage. Then the king's servants who were in the king's said to , "Why do you disobey the king's ?" Now it came to pass, when they spoke daily to him, and he didn't listen to them, that they told , to see whether reason would stand; for he had told them that he was a . When saw that didn't nor pay him homage, was full of . But he scorned the thought of laying hands on alone, for they had to him people. Therefore sought to destroy all the who were throughout the whole kingdom of , even people. In the first month, which is the month , in the twelfth year of King , they cast Pur, that is, the lot, before from day to day, and from month to month, and chose the twelfth month, which is the month . said to King , "There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom, and their laws are different from other people's. They don't keep the king's laws. Therefore it is not for the king's profit to allow them to . If it pleases the king, let it be written that they be destroyed; and I will pay ten thousand of silver into the hands of those who are in charge of the king's business, to bring it into the king's treasuries." The king took his ring from his hand, and gave it to the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the ' enemy. The king said to , "The silver is given to you, the people also, to do with them as it seems good to you." Then the king's were called in on the first month, on the thirteenth day of the month; and all that commanded was written to the king's local governors, and to the governors who were over every province, and to the princes of every people, to every province according to its writing, and to every people in their language. It was written in the name of King , and it was sealed with the king's ring. Letters were sent by couriers into all the king's provinces, to destroy, to kill, and to cause to , all , both young and old, little children and women, in one day, even on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month , and to plunder their possessions. A copy of the letter, that the should be given out in every province, was published to all the peoples, that they should be ready against that day. The couriers went out in haste by the king's , and the was given out in the citadel of . The king and sat down to drink; but the city of was perplexed.
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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.