World English Bible · The Persian return
Esther 8
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On that day, King gave the house of , the ' enemy, to the queen. came before the king; for had told what he was to her. The king took off his ring, which he had taken from , and gave it to . set over the house of . spoke yet again before the king, and fell down at his feet and begged him with tears to the mischief of the Agagite, and his plan that he had planned against the . Then the king held out to the golden . So arose, and stood before the king. She said, "If it pleases the king, and if I have in his sight, and the thing seems right to the king, and I am pleasing in his eyes, let it be written to reverse the letters devised by , the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, which he wrote to destroy the who are in all the king's provinces. For how can I to see the evil that would come to my people? How can I to see the of my relatives?" Then King said to the queen and to the , "See, I have given the house of , and they have hanged him on the gallows because he laid his hand on the . Write also to the as it pleases you, in the king's name, and seal it with the king's ring; for the writing which is written in the king's name, and sealed with the king's ring, may not be reversed by any man." Then the king's were called at that time, in the third month, which is the month , on the twenty-third day of the month; and it was written according to all that commanded to the , and to the local governors, and the governors and princes of the provinces which are from India to , one hundred twenty-seven provinces, to every province according to its writing, and to every people in their language, and to the in their writing, and in their language. He wrote in the name of King , and sealed it with the king's ring, and sent letters by courier on horseback, riding on royal horses that were bred from swift steeds. In those letters, the king granted the who were in every city to gather themselves together and to defend their lives—to destroy, to kill, and to cause to all the of the people and province that would assault them, their little ones and women, and to plunder their possessions, on one day in all the provinces of King , on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month . A copy of the letter, that the should be given out in every province, was published to all the peoples, that the should be ready for that day to themselves on their . So the couriers who rode on royal horses went out, hastened and pressed on by the king's . The was given out in the citadel of . went out of the of the king in royal clothing of blue and white, and with a great of gold, and with a robe of fine linen and purple; and the city of shouted and was glad. The had , gladness, joy, and . In every province and in every city, wherever the king's and his came, the had gladness, joy, a feast and a holiday. Many from among the peoples of the land became , for the fear of the had fallen on them.
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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.