Cyrus's Decree Ends the Exile

The event

Barely a year after taking Babylon, Cyrus issued a decree permitting the exiled people of Judah to return to their homeland and rebuild the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. 'The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem' (Ezra 1:2). Cyrus even ordered the sacred gold and silver vessels Nebuchadnezzar had carried off from the Temple to be returned to the returning exiles (Ezra 1:7-11), and 2 Chronicles 36:22-23 closes the Old Testament's historical narrative on this very note of restoration.

This decree fulfills prophecy with striking precision. Jeremiah had foretold that Judah's exile would last seventy years before the Lord would 'visit you, and fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place' (Jeremiah 29:10; see also 25:11-12). An ancient inscription known as the Cyrus Cylinder independently confirms that Cyrus followed a broader policy of restoring displaced peoples and their temples across his empire — a remarkable, non-biblical corroboration of the general practice Scripture describes, even though the Cylinder speaks in terms of the god Marduk rather than the Lord.

Under Zerubbabel, a descendant of David, and Joshua the high priest, the first wave of exiles returns to Jerusalem (Ezra 2) to rebuild the altar and eventually the Temple itself — a project that will stall under local opposition before being completed under a later Persian king, Darius.

Dating

Ezra does not state an exact regnal year for the decree; 538 BC is the standard reconstruction, reckoned from the start of Cyrus's first regnal year over Babylon following its fall in 539 BC.