The Edict of Cyrus and the First Return
538 BC, estimated dateEstimated date
Cyrus of Persia, having taken Babylon, allows the Judean exiles to go home and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, and hands back the temple vessels. A first group returns.
When Cyrus the Great took Babylon in 539 BC, the exiles from Judah passed from Babylonian to Persian rule.
The book of Ezra opens with a proclamation issued in Cyrus’s first year. The God of heaven, it says, has charged him to build a house in Jerusalem; any of that God’s people may go up to build it, and their neighbours are to support them with silver, gold, goods and animals (Ezra 1:1–4). Ezra gives a second version in Aramaic, a memorandum said to have been found in the royal archives at Ecbatana, which sets the dimensions of the building, charges the cost to the royal treasury and orders the return of the gold and silver vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had taken (Ezra 6:1–5). The books of Chronicles end with the same decree (2 Chronicles 36:22–23).
The temple vessels were counted out to Sheshbazzar, called the prince of Judah, who brought them to Jerusalem and, according to a later report, laid the temple’s foundations (Ezra 1:7–11) (Ezra 5:14–16). The list of those who returned is headed by Zerubbabel, a grandson of King Jehoiachin (1 Chronicles 3:17–19), and by the priest Jeshua the High Priest; it totals 42,360 people (Ezra 2:1–2, 64). They rebuilt the altar and began the temple, and then the work stalled for years (Ezra 3:1–4:5).
The Cyrus Cylinder, written in Babylon shortly after the conquest, records measures of the same kind. In it Cyrus says that he sent the images of gods back to their sanctuaries in a list of cities beyond the Tigris, and that he gathered their people and returned them to their settlements (Cyrus Cylinder lines 30–34). The cylinder does not mention Judah or Jerusalem. What it shows is that Cyrus claimed credit for sending displaced gods and their peoples home elsewhere in his realm, which is the kind of act Ezra describes.
Isaiah 40–55 names Cyrus as the Lord’s shepherd and anointed, through whom Jerusalem and its temple would be rebuilt (Isaiah 44:28–45:4). Ezra presents the decree as the fulfilment of Jeremiah’s word that the exile would end (Ezra 1:1; Jeremiah 29:10).
How this is dated
Estimated date. A scholarly estimate from primary evidence, with a margin of years.
Ezra dates the decree to the first year of Cyrus (Ezra 1:1). Cyrus’s army entered Babylon in October 539 BC (Nabonidus Chronicle iii.15–18). By Babylonian reckoning his first full regnal year as king of Babylon began in the spring of 538 BC, which is the year usually given for the decree. The text does not say when the first group set out, and the return may have been spread over several years.
Primary sources
Scripture
In context
Grows out of
- 12 October 539 BC, firm date
- about 550 BC to 539 BC, estimated date
Leads to
- March 515 BC, estimated date