King James Version · The Persian return
Zechariah 7
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And it came to pass in the fourth year of king Darius, that unto in the fourth day of the ninth month, even in Chisleu; When they had sent unto the house of Sherezer and Regem–melech, and their men, to before , And to speak unto the priests which were in the of hosts, and to , saying, Should I weep in the fifth month, separating myself, as I have done these so many years? Then came the word of of hosts unto me, saying, Speak unto all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying, When ye and mourned in the fifth and seventh month, even those seventy years, did ye at all unto me, even to me? And when ye did eat, and when ye did drink, did not ye eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves? Should ye not hear the words which hath cried by the former , when was inhabited and in prosperity, and the cities thereof round about her, when men inhabited the south and the plain? 8And unto , saying, Thus speaketh of hosts, saying, Execute true , and shew mercy and compassions every man to his brother: And oppress not the , nor , the , nor ; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in . But they refused to , and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear. Yea, they made their as an adamant stone, lest they should hear , and the words which of hosts hath sent in his by the former : therefore came a great from of hosts. Therefore it is come to pass, that as he cried, and they would not hear; so they cried, and I would not hear, saith of hosts: But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations whom they knew not. Thus the land was desolate after them, that no man passed through nor returned: for they laid the pleasant land desolate.
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.