World English Bible · The Persian return
Zechariah 12
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A of word concerning Israel: , who stretches out and lays the foundation of the earth, and forms of man within him says: "Behold, I will make a of reeling to all the surrounding peoples, and it will also be on Judah in the siege against . It will happen in that day that I will make a burdensome stone for all the peoples. All who burden themselves with it will be severely wounded, and all the nations of the earth will be gathered together against it. In that day," , "I will strike every horse with terror and his rider with madness. I will open my eyes on the house of Judah, and will strike every horse of the peoples with blindness. The chieftains of Judah will say in their , 'The inhabitants of are my strength in of Armies their .' In that day I will make the chieftains of Judah like a pan of among wood, and like a flaming torch among sheaves. They will devour all the surrounding peoples on and on the left; and will yet again in their own place, even in . also will the tents of Judah first, that the of house and the of the inhabitants of not be magnified above Judah. In that day will defend the inhabitants of . He who is feeble among them at that day will be like , and house will be like , like before them. It will happen in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against . I will pour on house and on the inhabitants of of and of . They will look to me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him as one mourns for his only son, and will grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for his . In that day there will be a great in , like the of in the valley of . The land will mourn, every family apart; the family of house 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 the Shimeites apart, and their wives apart; all the families who , every family apart, and their wives apart.
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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.