Tag Archives: Ezra 1-2

Daily Bible Study

May 29, 2023 Bible Study — There Is No Arc Of History

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Ezra 1-2.

Some years ago I heard a theory that when we look at history, every major world power, every empire which dominated the world provided more freedom for the peoples it ruled over than the one which preceded it.  My initial thought when I heard the theory was that it might be correct.  However, soon after that I was reading this very passage and I looked up some information about Cyrus (and then about the Persian Empire).  What I learned from that research was that the Persian Empire gave more freedom of religion and political autonomy to its subject peoples than any other world empire in history.  I learned that Cyrus, and the kings of Persia who followed him, encouraged the different peoples who were subordinate to him to build and maintain temples to their gods in order for them to pray for his success and health.  Further investigation reveals that Cyrus was apparently convinced that there was a god, or, perhaps many gods, but that he had no conviction as to who that god, or gods, was.  Finally, at least on this, copies of edicts by Cyrus similar to the one recounted here, but about the gods of other peoples, have been found.  Which means that the edict recounted here is likely a paraphrase of the actual edict issued by Cyrus encouraging the Israelites to return to Jerusalem to build the temple and worship God.

All of the above leads to the conclusion that there is no “arc of history” whereby people are becoming better and treating each other better, or whereby each generation experiences greater freedom than the one which came before.  No, as I have written in previous entries, each generation has to decide for themselves if they will serve and worship God.  The Israelites had repeatedly turned from God, so He sent them into exile.  During their exile, they cried out to Him and studied His Law.  God raised up Cyrus and brought the Israelites back to Jerusalem.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

May 29, 2022 Bible Study — What Do You Have To Lose By Assuming That God Is Real?

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Ezra 1-2.

The passage tells us that shortly after Cyrus had conquered Babylon he issued an order for the Temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem and giving the Exiled Israelites permission to return  to Jerusalem to build the Temple.  This is consistent with what we know from other records from the time: Cyrus was known to encourage those within his Empire to worship as they pleased and for those relocated by previous Empires to return to their home countries.  Also in his order, Cyrus encouraged those living near those Exiles who wished to return to Jerusalem to assist them financially.  It seems likely, both from the account here and other historical records we have of Cyrus, that he issued this order because he desired for God to be kindly disposed towards him.  As I understand the records, Cyrus was a true agnostic: “I don’t know if any of these gods exist, but, if they do, I wish for them to favor me over my enemies.”  Another way of putting what appears to have been Cyrus’ attitude: “I am better of behaving as if God is real when He is not, than behaving as if He is not real, when He is.”  I firmly believe that God will often guide those who take that attitude to Him to a better understanding of who He is.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

May 29, 2021 Bible Study Their Neighbors Aided The Exiles Return To Jerusalem

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Ezra 1-2.

Today’s passage shows us that when God moves, He moves all that is necessary to accomplish His goals. When He had sent the people of Judah into Exile, He had also promised to restore them once again.  When the time for that restoration came to pass, God caused Cyrus, King of the Persians, to order that they be allowed to return and rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple.  As part of his order, Cyrus instructed those among whom the people of Israel were living to provide assistance to those who wished to return to Judah.  We learn something about how the Exiles had lived in Exile by the fact that many of their neighbors contributed to the expenses they had in returning to Judah and Jerusalem.  Let us both contribute to those whom God has called to relocate to carry out His will and live so that our neighbors will be willing to aid us if He calls upon us to do so.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

May 29, 2020 Bible Study Not Everyone Chosen By God Chooses God

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezra 1-2.

I started out intending to focus on Cyrus, but noticed an interesting person I had never noticed before, Sheshbazzar.  He is only mentioned once in the Bible, although there is a Shenazzar listed in 1 Chronicles 3:18.  Shenazzar is a son of King Jehoiachin, who was taken into exile by Nebuchadnezzar.  There are numerous variant spellings of Shenazzar in the manuscripts of 1 Chronicles, making it not unlikely that Sheshbazzar is another variation on that name.  While the New Living Translation translates the passage as saying that Sheshbazzar was the leader of the returning exiles, the literal translation says that he was the prince of Judah.  Sheshbazzar is not mentioned again after we are told that Cyrus gave him the items taken from the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar.  It seems entirely likely to me that Sheshbazzar was the son (or perhaps grandson) of Jehoiachin and thus the prince of Judah, but that he never joined the returning exiles.

Now on to Cyrus: Cyrus was never a worshiper of God, or, at least, if he was he also worshiped many other gods as well.  Nevertheless, God used Cyrus to bring about a restoration of His people.   It was Cyrus who issued the order which led to the rebuilding of the Temple and the reestablishment of God’s worship in Jerusalem.  We can learn a lot about what God views as a good political leader from what the Bible says about Cyrus.  The writers of the Bible viewed Cyrus as a true servant of God, even though they never viewed him as one of them, as one of the Believers.

Daily Bible Study

May 29, 2019 Bible Study — Support for the Historical Accuracy of the Old Testament

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezra 1-2.

The first thing I want to note about the Book of Ezra is something which I learned earlier this year (perhaps I had read or heard this earlier, but, if so, I did not remember it).  The books of Ezra and Nehemiah had been one book in the Hebrew Bible.  They become separate books as a result of the fact that in the 2nd Century BC there were two separate, differing translations of the book into Greek.  I don’t want to spend more time on that today, but the way in which they became separated fascinates me.

Chapter One is consistent with the inscriptions which were discovered on what is known as the Cyrus Cylinder, a clay cylinder inscribed with a declaration from Cyrus declaring his support for the repatriation of peoples the Babylonians had taken into exile.  It also calls for the restoration of the temples of numerous gods throughout the territory which had been the Babylonian Empire and the return to those temples of the sacred objects which had been taken to Babylon.  While neither the Jews nor Jerusalem were mentioned on the Cyrus Cylinder, the inscription on the Cyrus Cylinder is consistent with what we find recorded here.  In fact, the Cyrus Cylinder makes a similar statement about Cyrus’ relationship to the chief god of the Babylonians as this passage says that he proclaimed about his relationship with God.  What is written in this passage is consistent with everything we know about the Persian Empire and how it dealt with the peoples under its control.  The Cyrus Cylinder was discovered at a time when many doubted that any of the events recorded in the Old Testament had actually happened.

The second chapter is a list of those who returned as part of Cyrus’ repatriation.  The important part about this was that they brought documents with them.  These documents included genealogies.  Those who could trace their ancestry to the genealogies of priests and Levites which they brought back were allowed to serve as such.  Those who could not were provisionally prevented from doing so.  However, those who returned acknowledged that their records were incomplete and allowed for asking God to guide them on whether these people should be allowed to serve.  At the time of the writing of this passage they had yet to restore the method if inquiry described in the Law of Moses, but they made a record of the people who thought they were descended from priests or Levites for whom confirmation could not be found.

Daily Bible Study

May 29, 2018 Bible Study

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezra 1-2.

    This is another one of those passages which I would probably just skim over if I was not writing this blog. At first glance (and second and third) it is just a dry account of the names of the first wave of returned Exiles. However, when you spend some time seeking how this passage matters to living our faith today you start to see some things. For me the key element here is how God used, and blessed, Cyrus. Cyrus was not a “believer” (he was neither Jewish, nor a convert to Judaism), but he still chose to honor God. After Cyrus conquered Babylon he went all in on returning Jews to the land of Israel, but he did not do so forcibly. Cyrus could have just issued an edict allowing the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple, but Cyrus went beyond that. The first step beyond just allowing them to return was that he encouraged them to do so. Then he called upon their neighbors where the Jews were living in Exile to provide them with financial assistance for relocating back to Jerusalem and the land of Israel. Finally, he removed items which Nebuchadnezzar had dedicated to other gods, which had originally come from the Temple, from the temples of those gods and gave them to the returning Exiles to take to Jerusalem. It is worth noting that the neighbors of those Exiles who chose to return generously aided them in preparing for their journey.

Daily Bible Study

May 29, 2017 Bible Study — Cyrus’ Edict and Zoroastrianism

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezra 1-2.

    There is no evidence outside of the Bible for the edict of Cyrus listed here. However, this edict is consistent with the policies of Cyrus for which we do have archeological records. It is interesting to note that over most of the course of the Empire which Cyrus founded there were no idols used as part of official worship. All of this would have been contemporaneous with the rise of Zoroastrianism. Many scholars see certain aspects of Judaism as borrowings from Zoroastrianism while rejecting the idea that Zoroastrianism may have derived from Judaism. Zoroastrianism is named after the prophet Zoroaster (or Zarathustra). There is reason to believe that Zoroaster was part of a much older religious tradition. Now what makes this interesting to me is that while the exact geographical origins of Zoroastrianism is clouded by time, it was likely close to where Abraham was born (at least as close as the land of Israel). We do not know why Abraham’s father left the land of his birth, but the Bible records there were others who worshiped God with varying degrees of fidelity. I want to note that the oldest known copy of the Zoroastrian scriptures dates to the 14th Century. That manuscript, and all others which are currently known to exist, is based on a compilation created sometime between the Third and Seventh Centuries. If one believes the Genesis account to be historical, not only does it make sense to consider that Zoroastrianism and Judaism are divergent parts of the same religious tradition but that Cyrus and the Persians were aware of this fact.

Daily Bible Study

May 29, 2016 Bible Study

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

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Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezra 1-2.

    When Cyrus conquered the Babylonians one of his first acts was to issue a proclamation encouraging the Jews in Exile to return to their homelands. This was consistent with the actions of Cyrus and other kings of the Persian Empire. The Persian Empire encouraged the various peoples they ruled over to practice their traditional religions. Where previous Empires in the region had divided up ethnic groups and dispersed them throughout the land they controlled, the Persians encouraged the multitudes of ethnic groups they ruled over to gather together as groups. This tolerance and acceptance of ethnic and religious minorities in their empire explains how the Jews were able to reassemble in Judea. The willingness of the government and the various neighbors of the Jewish Exiles to give resources to the Returning Jews explains how they were able to so quickly re-establish themselves in Judea.

Daily Bible Study

August 5, 2015 Bible Study

For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

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Proverbs 20:22-23

    Do not seek revenge for the wrong you perceive others to have done you. If they have truly done wrong, God will handle the matter. If your perception is in error and you take revenge, you will be the one in the wrong. Trust in God to bring everyone justice.

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Psalm 27:7-14

    God desires that we come and talk with Him. He is calling us to do so, let us listen to His voice and answer Him. When we come to the Lord in prayer, it is not enough to tell Him of our desires, we must also listen to what He has to tell us. If we enter into conversation with God, He will never reject us. Our friends and our family may reject us, but God never will.

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1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5

    The message of the Gospel is foolish to those who rely on human wisdom. We will never find God by seeking out what mankind thinks of as wise. The victory of Christ was dying on the cross. Christ did not achieve His victory by dying. Dying was His victory. Without the Holy Spirit working within us we can never understand this.
    Christ may be foolish to those who are wise by the world’s standard, but for those who have been called by God He is the power and wisdom of God. It is not by what the world views as power, or wealth, or wisdom that we come to God. God chooses those whom the world calls foolish, those whom the world calls powerless, those whom the world calls impoverished, or to sum it up, those whom the world calls worthless. Through those He has called God shows His power, His wealth, His wisdom, and most importantly He shows us that no person is worthless. I will boast about nothing but the power and wisdom of God.

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Ezra 1-2

    When Cyrus of Persia had defeated Babylon he not only allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem, he encouraged them to do so. In this way God fulfilled the prophecy He had given through Jeremiah regarding the length of the Exile.