Cyrus's Decree

The event

In 538 BC, his first year ruling over Babylon, Cyrus the Great issued a decree permitting the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple of the LORD, even authorizing the return of the gold and silver vessels Nebuchadnezzar had carried off. Ezra frames this decree not as ordinary Persian statecraft but as the direct work of God: "the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia" to fulfill "the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah" concerning seventy years of exile.

The decree fits what we know of Cyrus more broadly — the Cyrus Cylinder, a Babylonian clay artifact discovered in the nineteenth century, describes his general policy of restoring displaced peoples and their temples across his empire, lending remarkable outside confirmation to the biblical portrait of a king inclined toward religious tolerance and restoration.

What makes the decree even more striking is timing: more than a century earlier, Isaiah had named Cyrus by name as the LORD's chosen instrument to rebuild Jerusalem and release the captives, long before Cyrus — or even Persia as a world power — existed. For readers confident in Scripture's reliability, the decree is a double confirmation: of God's sovereignty over pagan kings, and of the trustworthiness of predictive prophecy fulfilled to the letter.

Scripture references

• Ezra 1:1-4
• Isaiah 44:28
• Isaiah 45:1
• 2 Chronicles 36:22-23