King James Version · The Persian return
Zechariah 12
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The burden of the word of for Israel, saith , which stretcheth forth , and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth of man within him. Behold, I will make a of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against . And in that day will I make a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it. In that day, saith , I will smite every horse with astonishment, and his rider with madness: and I will open mine eyes upon the house of Judah, and will smite every horse of the people with blindness. And the governors of Judah shall say in their , The inhabitants of shall be my strength in of hosts their . In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of among the wood, and like a torch of in a sheaf; and they shall devour all the people round about, on and on the left: and shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in . also shall the tents of Judah first, that the of the house of and the of the inhabitants of do not magnify themselves against Judah. In that day shall defend the inhabitants of ; and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as ; and the house of shall be as , as before them. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against . And I will pour upon the house of , and upon the inhabitants of , of and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his . In that day shall there be a great in , as the of in the valley of Megiddon. And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of apart, and their wives apart; The family of the apart, and their wives apart; the family of Shimei apart, and their wives apart; All the families that , every family apart, and their wives apart.
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.