King James Version · The Persian return
Zechariah 2
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I lifted up mine eyes again, and looked, and behold a man with a in his hand. Then said I, Whither goest thou? And he said unto me, To measure , to see what is the breadth thereof, and what is the length thereof. And, behold, that talked with me went forth, and another went out to meet him, And said unto him, Run, speak to this young man, saying, shall be inhabited as towns without walls for of men and cattle therein: For I, saith , will be unto her a wall of round about, and will be the in the midst of her. Ho, ho, come forth, and flee from the land of the north, saith : for I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the , saith . thyself, O , that dwellest with the daughter of . For thus saith of hosts; After the hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye. For, behold, I will shake mine hand upon them, and they shall be a spoil to their servants: and ye shall know that of hosts hath sent me. Sing and rejoice, O daughter of : for, lo, I come, and I will in the midst of thee, saith . And many nations shall be joined to in that day, and shall be my people: and I will in the midst of thee, and thou shalt know that of hosts hath sent me unto thee. And shall Judah his in the land, and shall choose again. Be silent, O , before : for he is up out of his habitation.
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.