King James Version · The Persian return
Joel 3
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For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again of Judah and , I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land. And they have cast lots for my people; and have given a boy for an , and sold a girl for , that they might drink. Yea, and what have ye to do with me, O , and Zidon, and all the coasts of Palestine? will ye render me a recompence? and if ye me, swiftly and speedily will I return your recompence upon your own head; Because ye have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried into your temples my goodly pleasant things: The children also of Judah and the children of have ye sold unto the , that ye might remove them far from their border. Behold, I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them, and will return your recompence upon your own head: And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the , to a people far off: for hath spoken it. Proclaim ye this among the ; Prepare war, wake up the , let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: Beat your plowshares into , and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O . Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. , in the valley of decision: for is near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. also shall roar out of , and utter his voice from ; and and the earth shall shake: but will be the of his people, and the strength of the . So shall ye know that I am your dwelling in , my mountain: then shall be , and there shall no strangers pass through her any more. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the mountains shall drop down , and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the rivers of Judah shall flow with waters, and a fountain shall come forth of the , and shall water the valley of . shall be a desolation, and shall be a desolate , for the against the children of Judah, because they have in their land. But Judah shall for ever, and from generation to generation. For I will cleanse their that I have not cleansed: for dwelleth in .
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.