Ezra 1:1 Commentary and Bible Study

‘Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia.’ That means, of course, in the first year of Cyrus reigning over Babylon as the whole empire, because he was actually king of Persia for many years before this. But in 539 BC Babylon fell, and in the following year this great Cyrus edict was proclaimed throughout all the empire. So the first contingent of Jews travelled back from Babylon to Judah in 538 BC.‘The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia’, and in this book that kind of language is usually used of the stirring up of the Israelites to some spiritual duty, or something good. So should we dilute it in the opening verse? Should we interpret this to mean that God only stirred up the spirit of Cyrus in the sense that he made a great impression upon him, and he became convinced that the Israelites should be sent back, and that their temple should be restored? When we look at the language throughout, it is very telling. People tend to say, ‘Oh what happened was this: Cyrus had a very enlightened policy. He moved against the Babylonian policy of deportation, deportation of whole populations, to make them slaves, servants, cheap labour, elsewhere in the Babylonian Empire, and he chose to send them home, to their homelands, and give them self-government. He did it generally, and the Israelites benefited, and went home and built their temple. But that is not the way we read it in the Bible. What we read in the Bible is that somehow Cyrus was so overwhelmed by God that the thing uppermost in his mind was that the Israelites should be sent back, and their temple, their house of God, should be reconstructed, and their witness resumed. The proclamation happened to benefit other nations that wanted to do likewise also, but it wasn't a general proclamation that happened to benefit the Jews. It was something which is put across to us in the Bible as specifically for the Jews, and for the temple, that happened to benefit others. It is important to make that clear. The Jews were released in order that they should bring glory to God. They were released to rebuild the temple and to lift up the city of Jerusalem from degradation to honour. They were dragged away from Jerusalem by the Babylonians, but they walked back freely.