World English Bible · The Persian return
Ezra 3
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When the seventh month had come, and the were in the cities, the people gathered themselves together as one man to . Then the son of stood up with his brothers the priests and the son of and his relatives, and built the of the of Israel, to offer burnt offerings on it, as in of the . In spite of their fear because of the peoples of the surrounding lands, they set the on its base; and they offered burnt offerings on it to , even burnt offerings morning and evening. They kept the feast of , as , and offered the daily burnt offerings by number, according to the , as the duty of every day required; and afterward the continual burnt offering, the of the new moons, of all the set feasts of that were , and of everyone who willingly offered a free will to . 6From the first day of the seventh month, they began to offer burnt offerings to ; but the foundation of temple was not yet laid. They also gave money to the masons and to the carpenters. They also gave food, drink, and oil to the people of and to bring cedar trees from to the sea, to , according to the grant that they had from King of . Now in the second year of their coming to house at , in the second month, the son of , the son of , and the rest of their brothers the priests and the , and all those who had come out of to , began the work and appointed the , from twenty years old and upward, to have the oversight of the work of house. Then stood with his sons and his brothers, and his sons, the sons of Judah, together to have the oversight of the workmen in house: the sons of , with their sons and their brothers the . When the builders laid the foundation of temple, they set the priests in their vestments with , with the the sons of with cymbals, to , according to the directions of king of Israel. They sang to one another in praising and giving thanks to , "For he is good, for his endures toward Israel." All the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised , because the foundation of house had been laid. But many of the priests and and heads of fathers' households, the old men who had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice. Many also 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 far away.
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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.