Who on earth is Cyrus?

In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfil the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and also to put it in writing: This is what Cyrus king of Persia says… Ezra 1:1-2

In 1879 an Iraqi archaeologist called Hormuzd Rassam found a clay object (broken into several pieces) while he was excavating the ruins of ancient Babylon. Once it had been very carefully put together again it turned out to be rather like a miniature barrel, about 9 inches long, and covered in cuneiform writing – that is, wedge-shaped “letters” picked out in the clay.

It is widely known as the “Cyrus Cylinder”, and is one of the most important discoveries in the history of archaeology (you can see it today in the British Museum in London). It gives details of the achievements of one of the great monarchs of the ancient world.

Cyrus – Cyrus II, or Cyrus the Great, to give him his full titles - was the King of Persia from 559-530BC. In 539 he defeated the mighty Babylonians, thus adding to his growing empire various smaller nations previously ruled by them.

One of those nations was poor little Judah, the kingdom of the Jewish nation, the chosen people of God.

So what? You might think that God’s people were simply transferred from one brutal tyranny to another. But no: King Cyrus had other ideas, policies that today might be called “enlightened”. Here are some of his words taken from the Cylinder, speaking about the various defeated nations now under his control…

I returned to these sacred cities…, the sanctuaries of which have been in ruins for a long time, the images which used to live in them, and I established for them permanent sanctuaries. I also gathered all their former inhabitants and returned them to their homes…

In plain English, I made a decree that our subject peoples should be free to go back to their ancestral homes, to rebuild their sacred buildings, and to re-settle in their homelands.

Cyrus himself worshipped the Babylonian god Marduk, but he insisted that the people returning home should be free to worship their own gods, and indeed he requested that prayer should be offered to those gods for him as emperor.

Who would have predicted such an extraordinary turn of events!

True, the Cyrus Cylinder makes no mention of Judah or the Jewish people, but obviously its decree included them in its scope. Go back to the quotation at the top from Ezra 1 and see exactly what it was that “Cyrus the king of Persia says…”

The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the Lord, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem, and may their God be with them. And in any locality where survivors may now be living, the people are to provide them with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with freewill offerings for the temple of God in Jerusalem.

Incredible! Kings and emperors at that time just didn’t act that way! No, they ruled by force and terror; they kept their subject peoples well under their cruel heel. No wonder the Cyrus Cylinder has been called one of the world’s earliest codes of civil rights.

Whether Cyrus really was as enlightened as these events suggest is questioned by the more sceptical. More likely, they say, he was acting out of self-interest: he was sensible enough to see that the best way to keep his empire united and happy, given all its variety of languages, races and religions, was to allow this kind of liberty.

Well, God alone knows the motivations of the human heart. But what we know is what actually happened – just read on in Ezra and Nehemiah. After the pain and horrors of “the Exile” (vividly brought to life in Psalm 137) the return is now under way!

Yes, the process will be hard, and it will take another 500 years and more, but it will climax in the coming of Israel’s long-predicted King, the descendant of their greatest king, David: it will climax in the coming of Jesus of Nazareth.

Forgive me if history isn’t your thing and if this is all rather boring. But there is a lot of history in the Bible! So at some point anyone who is serious about the Bible needs to get to grips with it. And in this case, surely, it is fascinating to see how Bible history and “secular” history dovetail together.

What can we make of the Cyrus story? The most basic truth is simple: God is the Lord of history. He made the world; he created a special people whose destiny is embedded in the history of the world and therefore intertwined with the destinies of other nations; he loves the world he has made, and its peoples; and his intention is to bring to fulfilment his purposes for the world. And nothing can or will change this.

That much is clear enough.

But I think there is more besides, for which I have no space. So please join me next time…

Great is the darkness that covers the earth,/ Oppression, injustice and pain./ Nations are slipping in hopeless despair,/ Though many have come in your name,/ Watching while sanity dies,/ Touched by the madness and lies./ Come, Lord Jesus, come Lord Jesus,/ Pour out your Spirit, we pray./ Come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord Jesus,/ Pour out your Spirit on us today. Amen.

Gerald Coates and Noel Richards