2 Chronicles 36:22 - Exposition

In the first year of Cyrus King of Persia . A period of half a century has elapsed between the latest date of the foregoing verses and the date signalized here (circ. b.c. 5.38-6). With the proclamation of Cyrus begins in fact the manhood, with all its mystic, its wonderful, and its still non-progressing struggles, of the Jew. His simple childhood, wilful youth, am indeed for ever gone. But he and his nation are with unspeakably painful travail born. No life of nation that is or ever has been merits the devout observation and study that this unchal-lengeably does. Our present verse and the one succeeding it are, sentence for sentence, the same with the opening verses of the Book of Ezra, which may possibly once have joined on to Chronicles, as one work, though we think this exceedingly unlikely. Cyrus (the כוֹרֶשׁ of the Hebrew text) was the son of a royal Persian, Cambysses; his mother was Mandane, daughter of Astyages, last King of Media. The name appears on the monuments, written Kurus. Cyrus defeated his grandfather Astyages, b.c. 559; ending thereby the Median royal line; and he defeated Croesus, b.c. 546, possessing himself thereby of the kingdom of Lydia; he took Babylon, as above, b.c. 538. He himself died in battle, b.c. 529. That the word of the Lord by … Jeremiah might be accomplished (see Jeremiah 25:11-14 ; Jeremiah 29:9-11 ). The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus . The fact is told us, and this, no doubt, as on a thousand other unsuspected occasions of far more intrinsic and vital interest in the Bible, is sufficient. It would have been interesting to know, however, even here, the mode in which Cyrus was appealed to; as, e.g; it has been plausibly suggested that Daniel may have been in part instrumental in the work, and that, again, in part perhaps by directing the attention of Cyrus to Isaiah 44:28 ; Isaiah 45:1 .