World English Bible · 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, word came by the , to the son of , governor of Judah, and to the son of , the , saying, "This is what of Armies says: These people say, 'The time hasn't yet come, the time for house to be built.'" Then word came by the , saying, "Is it a time for you yourselves to in your paneled houses, while this house lies waste? Now therefore this is what of Armies says: 'Consider your ways. You have sown much, and bring in little. You eat, but you don't have enough. You drink, but you aren't filled with drink. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and he who earns wages earns wages to put them into a bag with holes in it.' "This is what of Armies says: 'Consider your ways. Go up to the mountain, bring wood, and build the house. I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified," . "You looked for much, and, behold, it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why?" of Armies, "Because of my house that lies waste, while each of you is busy with his own house. Therefore for your sake withhold the , and the earth withholds its fruit. I called for a on the land, on the mountains, on the grain, on the , on the oil, on that which the ground produces, on men, on livestock, and on all the labor of the hands." Then the son of and the son of , the , with all of the people, their voice, and the words of the , as their had sent him; and the people feared . Then , , spoke message to the people, saying, "I am with you," . stirred up of the son of , governor of Judah, and of the son of , the , and of all of the people; and they came and worked on the of Armies, their , in the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.
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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.