World English Bible · The Persian return
Nehemiah 2
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
In the month , in the twentieth year of the king, when was before him, I picked up the , and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad before in his . The king said to me, "Why is your sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing else but sorrow of ." Then I was very much afraid. I said to the king, "Let the king live ! Why shouldn't be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' , lies waste, and its have been consumed with ?" Then the king said to me, "What is your request?" So I to the of . I said to the king, "If it pleases the king, and if has in your sight, I ask that you would send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' , that I may build it." The king said to me (the queen was also sitting by him), "How long will your journey be? When will you return?" So it pleased the king to send me, and I set a time for him. Moreover I said to the king, "If it pleases the king, let letters be given me to the governors beyond , that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah; and a letter to the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the of the citadel by , for the wall of the city, and for the house that I will occupy." The king granted my requests, because of the good hand of my on me. Then I came to the governors beyond , and gave them the king's letters. Now the king had sent captains of the army and horsemen with me. When the and the servant heard of it, it grieved them exceedingly, because a man had come to seek the welfare of the . So I came to , and was there three days. I arose in the night, I and men with me. I didn't tell anyone what my put into to do for . There wasn't any animal with me except the animal that I rode on. I went out by night by the valley gate toward the jackal's well, then to the dung gate; and I inspected the walls of , which were broken down, and its were consumed with . Then I went on to the spring and to the king's pool, but there was no place for the animal that was under me to pass. Then I went up in the night by the brook and inspected the wall; and I turned back, and entered by the valley gate, and so returned. 16The didn't know where I went, or what I did. I had not as yet told it to the , nor to the priests, nor to the nobles, nor to the , nor to the rest who did the work. Then I said to them, "You see the bad situation that we are in, how lies waste, and its are burned with . Come, let's build up the wall of , that we won't be disgraced." I told them about the hand of my which was good on me, and also about the king's words that he had spoken to me. They said, "Let's rise up and build." So they strengthened their hands for the good work. But when the , the servant, and the , heard it, they ridiculed us and despised us, and said, "What is this thing that you are doing? Will you rebel against the king?" Then I answered them, and said to them, "The of will prosper us. Therefore we, his servants, will arise and build; but you have no , nor right, nor memorial in ."
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. 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.