King James Version · The Persian return
Ezra 3
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
And when the seventh month was come, and the were in the cities, the people gathered themselves together as one man to . Then stood up the son of , and his brethren the priests, and the son of , and his brethren, and builded the of the of Israel, to offer burnt offerings thereon, as in of the . And they set the upon his bases; for fear was upon them because of the people of those countries: and they offered burnt offerings thereon unto , even burnt offerings morning and evening. They kept also the , as , and offered the daily burnt offerings by number, according to the custom, as the duty of every day required; And afterward offered the continual burnt offering, both of the new moons, and of all the set feasts of that were , and of every one that willingly offered a freewill unto . 6From the first day of the seventh month began they to offer burnt offerings unto . But the foundation of of was not yet laid. They gave money also unto the masons, and to the carpenters; and meat, and drink, and oil, unto them of Zidon, and to them of , to bring cedar trees from to the sea of , according to the grant that they had of king of . Now in the second year of their coming unto the house of at , in the second month, began the son of , and the son of , and of their brethren the priests and the , and all they that were come out of unto ; and appointed the , from twenty years old and upward, to set forward the work of the . Then stood with his sons and his brethren, and his sons, the sons of Judah, together, to set forward the workmen in the house of : the sons of , with their sons and their brethren the . And when the builders laid the foundation of of , they set the priests in their apparel with , and the the sons of with cymbals, to , after the of king of Israel. And they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto ; because he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever toward Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised , because the foundation of the was laid. But many of the priests and and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice; and many shouted aloud for joy: So that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people: for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was heard afar off.
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.