King James Version · The Persian return
Nehemiah 1
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The words of the son of . And it came to pass in the month Chisleu, in the twentieth year, as I was in the palace, That , one of my brethren, came, he and certain men of Judah; and I asked them concerning the that had escaped, which were left of , and concerning . And they said unto me, that are left of there in the province are in great affliction and : the wall of also is broken down, and the thereof are burned with . And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, and , and before the of , And said, I beseech thee, O of , the great and terrible , that keepeth and mercy for them that love him and observe his : Let thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear the of thy servant, which I before thee now, day and night, for the thy servants, and the of the , which we have against thee: both I and ’s house have . We have dealt very corruptly against thee, and have not kept , nor the , nor , which thou commandedst thy servant . Remember, I beseech thee, the word that thou commandedst thy servant , saying, If ye transgress, I will scatter you abroad among the nations: But if ye turn unto me, and keep my , and do them; though there were of you cast out unto the uttermost part of the , yet will I gather them from thence, and will bring them unto the place that I have chosen to set my name there. Now these are thy servants and thy people, whom thou hast by thy great , and by thy strong hand. O , I beseech thee, let now thine ear be attentive to the of thy servant, and to the of thy servants, who to fear thy name: and prosper, I thee, thy servant this day, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man. For I was the king’s cupbearer.
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.