King James Version · The Persian return
Zechariah 11
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Open thy doors, O , that the may devour thy cedars. Howl, fir tree; for the cedar is fallen; because the mighty are spoiled: howl, O ye oaks of ; for the forest of the vintage is come down. There is a voice of the howling of the ; for their is spoiled: a voice of the roaring of young lions; for the pride of Jordan is spoiled. Thus saith my ; Feed the the slaughter; Whose possessors them, and hold themselves not guilty: and they that sell them say, be ; for I am rich: and their own them not. For I will no more the inhabitants of the land, saith : but, lo, I will the men every one into his neighbour’s hand, and into the hand of his king: and they shall smite the land, and out of their hand I will not them. And I will feed the slaughter, even you, O of the flock. And I took unto me two staves; the one I called Beauty, and the other I called Bands; and I fed the flock. Three also I in one month; and lothed them, and their also abhorred me. Then said I, I will not feed you: that that dieth, let it ; and that that is to , let it ; and let the rest eat every one of another. And I took my , even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my which I had made with all the people. And it was broken in that day: and so of the flock that waited upon me knew that it was the word of . And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And said unto me, Cast it unto the : a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took pieces of silver, and cast them to the in the . Then I cut asunder mine other , even Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. And said unto me, Take unto thee yet the instruments of a foolish . For, lo, I will raise up a in the land, which shall not visit those that , neither shall seek the young one, nor heal that that is broken, nor feed that that standeth still: but he shall eat of , and tear their claws in pieces. Woe to the idol that leaveth the flock! shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.
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.