World English Bible · The Persian return
Malachi 1
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A , word to Israel by . "I have loved you," . Yet you say, "How have you loved us?" "Wasn't brother?" , "Yet I loved ; but I hated, and made his mountains a desolation, and gave his heritage to the jackals of ." Whereas says, "We are beaten down, but we will return and build the waste places," of Armies says, "They shall build, but I will throw down; and men will call them ' Land,' even the people against whom shows ." Your eyes will see, and you will say, " is great—even beyond the border of Israel!" "A son honors his , and a servant his master. If I am a , then where is my ? And if I am a master, where is the respect due me?" of Armies to you priests who despise my name. "You say, 'How have we despised your name?' You offer polluted bread on my . You say, 'How have we polluted you?' In that you say, ' table is contemptible.' When you offer the blind for , isn't that evil? And when you offer the lame and sick, isn't that evil? Present it now to your governor! Will he be pleased with you? Or will he accept your person?" of Armies. "Now, please entreat the of , that he may be to us. With this, will he accept any of you?" of Armies. "Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle on my in ! I have no pleasure in you," of Armies, "neither will I accept an at your hand. For from the rising of the sun even to its going down, my name is great among the nations, and in every place will be offered to my name, and a pure ; for my name is great among the nations," of Armies. "But you profane it when you say, ' table is polluted, and its fruit, even its food, is contemptible.' You say also, 'Behold, what a weariness it is!' And you have sniffed at it", of Armies; "and you have brought that which was taken by , the lame, and the sick; thus you bring the . Should I accept this at your hand?" . "But the deceiver is who has in his flock a male, and and to a defective thing; for I am a great King," of Armies, "and my name is awesome among the nations."
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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.