World English Bible · The Persian return
Ezra 1
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Now in the first year of king of , that word by might be accomplished, stirred up of king of , so that he made a proclamation throughout all , and put it also in writing, saying, " king of says, ', the of , has given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he has commanded me to build him a house in , which is in Judah. Whoever there is among you of all his people, may his be with him, and let him go up to , which is in Judah, and build the , the of Israel (he is ), which is in . Whoever is left, in any place where he lives, let the men of his place help him with silver, with gold, with goods, and with animals, in addition to the free will for house which is in .'" Then the heads of fathers' households of Judah and , the priests and the , all whose had stirred to go up, rose up to build house which is in . All those who were around them strengthened their hands with vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, with animals, and with precious things, in addition to all that was willingly offered. Also the king brought out the vessels of house, which had brought out of , and had put in the house of his gods; even those, king of brought out by the hand of the treasurer, and counted them out to the prince of Judah. This is the number of them: thirty platters of gold, one thousand platters of silver, twenty-nine knives, 10thirty bowls of gold, four hundred ten silver bowls of a second kind, and one thousand other vessels. All the vessels of gold and of silver were five thousand four hundred. brought all these up when the were brought up from to .
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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.