Ezra 1King James Version
Cyrus king of Persia, in the first year of his reign, makes a proclamation. The Lord God of heaven has charged him to build a house in Jerusalem. Whoever among the exiles wants to go home, let him go. The vessels of the temple that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away are brought out of the treasury and counted back out. The exile begins to end.
In 538 BC, Cyrus king of Persia issues a decree freeing the Jewish exiles to return home and rebuild God's temple. He cites the God of heaven as the one who commissioned him. The exiles who feel stirred to go begin organizing. Neighbors donate gold, silver, and supplies. Cyrus returns the original temple vessels Nebuchadnezzar had looted from Jerusalem decades before.
God works through a pagan king to reverse seventy years of exile, turning the decree of an empire into the fulfillment of a prophet's word.
3: "Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the LORD God of Israel." Cyrus, a polytheist, issues a theological invitation, and the whole rest of the book flows from it.
Babylon had fallen to Persia in 539 BC. Within a year, Cyrus issued his famous decree, which archaeologists have confirmed on the Cyrus Cylinder. His policy of letting displaced peoples return home was practical statecraft as much as benevolence, but for the Jewish exiles, it felt like the hand of God reaching into imperial politics to open a door.
Cyrus king of Persia, who issues the liberating decree; Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah, who receives the temple vessels and leads the first wave home.
This chapter is the hinge point between exile and restoration. Jeremiah had prophesied seventy years of captivity, and this decree lands on the exact schedule. It establishes a pattern that runs through the whole book: God accomplishes his purposes through political machinery that has no idea it is being used.
For when you have been waiting so long that hope has gone quiet. The decree comes suddenly, out of a foreign palace, from a king who does not even worship your God.
1Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying,
2Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
3Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the LORD God of Israel, (he is the God,) which is in Jerusalem.
4And whosoever remaineth in any place where he sojourneth, let the men of his place help him with silver, and with gold, and with goods, and with beasts, beside the freewill offering for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.
5Then rose up the chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests, and the Levites, with all them whose spirit God had raised, to go up to build the house of the LORD which is in Jerusalem.
6And all they that were about them strengthened their hands with vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, and with beasts, and with precious things, beside all that was willingly offered.
7Also Cyrus the king brought forth the vessels of the house of the LORD, which Nebuchadnezzar had brought forth out of Jerusalem, and had put them in the house of his gods;
8Even those did Cyrus king of Persia bring forth by the hand of Mithredath the treasurer, and numbered them unto Sheshbazzar, the prince of Judah.
9And this is the number of them: thirty chargers of gold, a thousand chargers of silver, nine and twenty knives,
10Thirty basons of gold, silver basons of a second sort four hundred and ten, and other vessels a thousand.
11All the vessels of gold and of silver were five thousand and four hundred. All these did Sheshbazzar bring up with them of the captivity that were brought up from Babylon unto Jerusalem.