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RULERS OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE

(All dates are approximate and BCE)

Cyrus (“The Great”)

550-529

(Captures Babylon in 539; allows Jews to return to Jerusalem in 538)

Cambyses II

529-522

(Captures Memphis, capital of Egypt)

Darius I

522-486

(Jerusalem Temple completed in 516; defeated by Greeks at Marathon in 490)

Xerxes I

486-465

Artaxerxes I

465-425

(Sends Ezra to Jerusalem in 458; Nehemiah in 445? and again in 433?)

Xerxes II

425-424

Darius II

424-404

Artaxerxes II

404-359

Artaxerxes III

359-338

Arses

338-336

Darius III

336-330

In 330 BCE, the Persian empire fell to Alexander the Great, beginning the “Hellenistic Era” in which Greek civilization and language spread and predominated throughout the Near Eastern world.

PLOT SUMMARY: EZRA

Most scholars agree with the biblical record that the Return of exiled Jews to Jerusalem was not a mass, sudden movement but took place gradually, in waves. In the year after Cyrus captured Babylon, “without shooting a single arrow,” as ancient Near Eastern authority Cyrus Gordon puts it, the initial group of Jews came back to Jerusalem starting in 538 BCE. They were led by Sheshbazaar, a “prince of Judah” despite his Persian name, who served as territorial governor. Under his leadership, reconstruction of the Temple commenced almost immediately. But a conflict soon arose between those Judeans who had been left behind and the returning Jews. Over the nearly fifty years of Exile, the mostly poorer Judeans who had been allowed to remain behind had staked claims to some of the land left behind by the Exiles, who had been the elite of Judean society, mostly aristocrats or members of the priestly class. Animosity was natural between those who had stayed and the returnees who expected to return to their previous status. The conflict between the two groups brought work on the Temple to a halt.

About seventeen years later, a second wave of returnees were permitted to return during the reign of Darius I, a twenty-eight-year-old soldier and relative of Cyrus who took the Persian throne in 522 BCE following a series of intrigues and plots. Now led by Zerubbabel, the grandson of King Jehoiachin and a descendant of King David, and the high priest Jeshua, work recommenced on the temple in 520 BCE. Encouraged by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah (see Post-Exile Prophets), the returnees completed the second Temple in 516 BCE.

The Judah of the Return was a far cry from Solomon’s empire, and the second Temple, completed in March/April of 516 BCE, was a modest affair, reflecting these changed circumstances. Judah was a fraction of the size of Solomon’s Israel, and territory once controlled by the Jews was now in the hands of neighboring Edom and the Samaritans. Despite the fact that Cyrus provided funding for rebuilding the Temple, the new center of Jewish worship was not as grand as Solomon’s in all its glory had been. There is very little description of the rebuilt Temple in the book of Ezra except that it was to be sixty cubits (approximately one hundred feet, or thirty meters) high and sixty cubits wide, with walls constructed of three courses of stone and one of timber. All of the gold and silver vessels that had been salvaged from the original Temple and taken to Babylon were also returned to Jerusalem. But unmentioned here or elsewhere in the Hebrew scriptures is the fate of the Ark of the Covenant, Judaism’s most sacred object. Whether it was destroyed in 586 BCE when Jerusalem was sacked and the Temple burned by Nebuchadnezzar’s army or salvaged and taken to Babylon by the captives remains a biblical mystery.

In 458 BCE, more than fifty years after the Temple was dedicated, a third wave of returning Exiles came back during the reign of Darius’s successor, Artaxerxes. Ezra, a Jewish official of the Persian government, was sent to ensure that Jewish Law was being strictly observed. To his great dismay, Ezra discovered that many of the former exiles, as well