World English Bible · The Persian return
Zechariah 2
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I lifted up my eyes, and saw, and behold, a man with a in his hand. Then I asked, "Where are you going?" He said to me, "To measure , to see what is its width and what is its length." Behold, who talked with me went out, and another went out to meet him, and said to him, "Run, speak to this young man, saying, ' will be inhabited as villages without walls, because of of men and livestock in it. For I,' , 'will be to her a wall of around it, and I will be the in the middle of her. Come! Come! Flee from the land of the north,' ; 'for I have spread you abroad as the four winds of ,' . 'Come, ! Escape, you who with the daughter of .' For of Armies says: 'For he has sent me to the nations which plundered you; for he who touches you touches the apple of his eye. For, behold, I will shake my hand over them, and they will be a plunder to those who them; and you will know that of Armies has sent me. Sing and rejoice, daughter of ! For behold, I come and I will within you,' . Many nations shall join themselves to in that day, and shall be my people; and I will among you, and you shall know that of Armies has sent me to you. will Judah as his in the land, and will again choose . Be silent, , before ; for he has roused himself from his habitation!"
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.