World English Bible · The Persian return
Zechariah 7
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In the fourth year of King Darius, word came to in the fourth day of the ninth month, the month of . The people of sent and Regem and their men to entreat , and to speak to the priests of the of Armies and to , saying, "Should I weep in the fifth month, separating myself, as I have done these so many years?" Then the word of of Armies came to me, saying, "Speak to all the people of the land and to the priests, saying, 'When you and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh month for these seventy years, did you at all to me, really to me? When you eat and when you drink, don't you eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves? Aren't these the words which proclaimed by the former when was inhabited and in prosperity, and its cities around her, and the South and the lowland were inhabited?'" 8 word came to , saying, "Thus has of Armies spoken, saying, 'Execute true , and show kindness and every man to his brother. Don't oppress the , , the , nor ; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in .' But they refused to listen, and turned their backs, and stopped their ears, that they might not hear. Yes, they made their as hard as flint, lest they might hear and the words which of Armies had sent by his by the former . Therefore great came from of Armies. It has come to pass that, as he called and they refused to listen, so they will call and I will not listen," said of Armies; "but I will scatter them with a whirlwind among all the nations which they have not known. Thus the land was desolate after them, so that no man passed through nor returned; for they made the pleasant land desolate."
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.