King James Version · The Persian return
Haggai 1
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In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, in the first day of the month, came the word of by the unto the son of , governor of Judah, and to the son of Josedech, the , saying, Thus speaketh of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that ’s house should be built. Then came the word of by the , saying, Is it time for you, O ye, to in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste? Now therefore thus saith of hosts; Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. Thus saith of hosts; Consider your ways. Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith . Ye looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith of hosts. Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house. Therefore the over you is stayed from , and the earth is stayed from her fruit. And I called for a upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the , and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labour of the hands. Then the son of , and the son of Josedech, the , with all of the people, their , and the words of the , as their had sent him, and the people did fear before . Then spake ’s in ’s message unto the people, saying, I am with you, saith . And stirred up of the son of , governor of Judah, and of the son of Josedech, the , and of all of the people; and they came and did work in the of hosts, their , In the four and twentieth day of the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.
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.