Ezra 1:2

2. Thus saith Cyrus “There are probably few things more surprising to the intelligent student of Scripture than the religious tone of the proclamations which are assigned in Ezra to Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes. Compare Ezra 6:8-10; Ezra 7:12; Ezra 7:23. Two things are especially remarkable in these passages first, the strongly marked religious character, very unusual in heathen documents; and, secondly, the distinctness with which they assert the unity of God, and thence identify the God of the Persians with the God of the Jews. Both these points receive abundant illustration from the Persian cuneiform inscriptions, in which the recognition of a single supreme God Ormazd and the clear and constant ascription to him of the direction of all mundane affairs, are leading features. In all the Persian monuments of any length, the monarch makes the acknowledgment that ‘Ormazd has bestowed on him his empire.’ Every success that is gained is ‘by the grace of Ormazd.’ The name of Ormazd occurs in almost every other paragraph of the Behistun inscription. No public monuments with such a pervading religious spirit have ever been discovered among the records of any heathen nation as those of the Persian kings; and through them all, down to the time of Artaxerxes Ochus, the name of Ormazd stands alone and unapproachable as that of the Supreme Lord of earth and heaven.” RAWLINSON, Hist. Evid., p. 147.

The same distinguished writer says in another work: “The conquest of Babylon by Persia was practically, if not a death-blow, at least a severe wound, to that sensuous idol-worship which had for more than twenty centuries been the almost universal religion in the countries between the Mediterranean and the Zagros mountain range. That religion never recovered itself was never reinstated. It survived, a longer or shorter time, in places. To a slight extent it corrupted Zoroastrianism; but, on the whole, from the date of the fall of Babylon it declined. ‘Bel bowed down, Nebo stooped,’ (Isaiah 46:1;) ‘Merodach was broken in pieces;’ judgment was done upon the Babylonian graven images, (Jeremiah 50:2; Jeremiah 51:52;) and the system of which they formed a necessary part having once fallen from its proud pre-eminence, gradually decayed and vanished.

“Parallel with the decline of the old Semitic idolatry was the advance of its direct antithesis, pure spiritual monotheism. The same blow which laid the Babylonian religion in the dust struck off the fetters from Judaism. Purified and refined by the precious discipline of adversity, the Jewish system which Cyrus, feeling towards it a natural sympathy, protected, upheld, and replaced in its proper locality, advanced from this time in influence and importance, leavening little by little the foul mass of superstition and impurity which came in contact with it. Proselytism grew more common. The Jews spread themselves wider. The return from the captivity, which Cyrus authorized almost immediately after the capture of Babylon, is the starting-point from which we may trace a gradual enlightenment of the heathen world by the dissemination of Jewish beliefs and practices; such dissemination being greatly helped by the high estimation in which the Jewish system was held by the civil authority, both while the empire of the Persians lasted, and when power passed to the Macedonians.” Ancient Monarchies, vol. iii, p. 385.

Lord God of heaven The writer uses Jehovah, “LORD,” instead of Ormazd, in this edict. A common formula in the Persian inscriptions is, “The great God Ormazd, who gave both earth and heaven to mankind.”

Given me all the kingdoms In the Behistun inscription, Darius says, “Ormazd granted me the empire. By the grace of Ormazd I hold this empire.”

Charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem Bertheau thinks that our author entirely recast Cyrus’s edict from his own theocratic standpoint. The king’s proclamation probably contained abundant references to Ormazd as the God by whose grace and direction he received and administered the kingdom, and our historian, acknowledging no other God than Jehovah, translated the edict in the form we now have it, substituting Jehovah for Ormazd, and otherwise altering it to suit his own religious ideas. This supposition may be partly true. Cyrus did not issue his proclamation in the Hebrew language, and, probably after the manner of the Persian inscriptions, he used the name of Ormazd and not Jehovah, and in these respects our author may have modified the phraseology in his translation; but, granting even this, it is not only possible, but highly probable, that, as Josephus and the older expositors hold, Cyrus had been shown Isaiah’s prophecies, where Jehovah says of Cyrus, “He shall say to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.” Isaiah 44:28. Nor is it in the least improbable that Daniel, who stood high in the court of Babylon under Darius and Cyrus, (Daniel 6:2; Daniel 6:28,) advised Cyrus of Isaiah’s prophecies, and also had something to do with the drawing up of this proclamation. The king regarded these prophecies as a divine charge to build the temple.