Ezra

In the first year that Cyrus was king of Persia, the LORD stirred up Cyrus to act, so that what the LORD had said through the prophet Jeremiah would come true. Cyrus sent out an announcement all through his kingdom, and he also put it in writing. It said:

1Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying,

NoteCyrus took Babylon in 539 BC, and his first year as ruler there was 538 BC. Fifty years earlier the Babylonians had destroyed Jerusalem and deported much of Judah's population; those exiles and their children are the people this announcement concerns. The saying of Jeremiah referred to is his prediction that the exile would last seventy years and then the exiles would be brought back (Jeremiah 25:11-12; 29:10). Persia was centered in what is now Iran and had just absorbed the Babylonian empire.

2"This is what Cyrus, king of Persia, says: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth. And he has given me the job of building a house for him at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

2Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

Note"The God of heaven" was the ordinary way of naming the Jewish God in official documents of the Persian period, and Persian kings routinely issued decrees restoring local temples and sponsoring local gods; the wording here is what such a decree would sound like. "A house" means a temple (the building where a god was served), not a dwelling in the ordinary sense.

3Any of you who belong to his people may go. May his God be with him. Let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the LORD, the God of Israel. He is the God who is in Jerusalem.

3Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the LORD God of Israel, (he is the God,) which is in Jerusalem.

Note"Go up" is the standard expression for traveling to Jerusalem, which sits high in the hill country; one goes up to it from any direction, and down from it.

4And wherever any of the people who are left are living, let the people of that place help him. Let them give him silver, gold, goods, and animals, along with a gift given freely for the house of God in Jerusalem."

4And whosoever remaineth in any place where he sojourneth, let the men of his place help him with silver, and with gold, and with goods, and with beasts, beside the freewill offering for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.

Note"The people who are left" means the survivors of the deportation and their descendants, those still living scattered in Babylonian territory. A "freewill offering" was a gift for the temple that no law required, given purely because the giver chose to; it was a recognized category of offering, distinct from obligatory dues.

5Then the family leaders of Judah and Benjamin got ready to go, and so did the priests and the Levites. Everyone whose spirit God had stirred up got ready to go up and build the house of the LORD in Jerusalem.

5Then rose up the chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests, and the Levites, with all them whose spirit God had raised, to go up to build the house of the LORD which is in Jerusalem.

Note"Family leaders" translates a phrase meaning heads of ancestral households (the senior men who represented extended family groups, the basic unit by which returning exiles were organized and counted. Judah and Benjamin were the two tribes that made up the southern kingdom taken into exile, so together they stand for the whole deported population. Priests were descendants of Aaron who alone could perform sacrifices; Levites were members of the wider tribe of Levi who handled the supporting work of the temple) music, gatekeeping, transport, and maintenance.

6And all their neighbors helped them along. They gave them things made of silver, and gold, goods, animals, and valuable items, on top of everything that was given freely.

6And all they that were about them strengthened their hands with vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, and with beasts, and with precious things, beside all that was willingly offered.

NoteThe King James "strengthened their hands" is an idiom for giving practical, material backing rather than encouragement. The picture of neighbors loading departing Israelites with silver, gold, and goods deliberately echoes the account of the exodus from Egypt.

7King Cyrus also brought out the objects from the house of the LORD that Nebuchadnezzar had carried off from Jerusalem and put in the temple of his own gods.

7Also Cyrus the king brought forth the vessels of the house of the LORD, which Nebuchadnezzar had brought forth out of Jerusalem, and had put them in the house of his gods;

NoteNebuchadnezzar was the Babylonian king who captured Jerusalem and destroyed its temple in 587/586 BC, carrying its metal equipment back to Babylon. Depositing captured temple objects in the victor's own temple was normal practice: it displayed the defeated nation's gods as subject to the conqueror's. Cyrus reversing this was likewise a recognized political act.

8Cyrus, king of Persia, had Mithredath the treasurer bring them out. Mithredath counted them out and handed them over to Sheshbazzar, the leader of Judah.

8Even those did Cyrus king of Persia bring forth by the hand of Mithredath the treasurer, and numbered them unto Sheshbazzar, the prince of Judah.

NoteMithredath is a Persian name ("given by Mithra"); the treasurer was the official responsible for the royal stores. Sheshbazzar also bears a Babylonian name. The title given him (Hebrew *nasi*, here "leader" or "prince") can mean a man of the royal line of David or simply a chief appointed over a district; the text does not settle which, and how Sheshbazzar relates to Zerubbabel, who leads later in the book, is not explained.

9Here is the count of them: 30 gold dishes, 1,000 silver dishes, 29 knives,

9And this is the number of them: thirty chargers of gold, a thousand chargers of silver, nine and twenty knives,

NoteThe King James "chargers" means large flat serving dishes or platters, not horses. The Hebrew word rendered "knives" is uncertain; ancient translators guessed variously at censers, bowls, or duplicate items, and no one can now say what these twenty-nine objects were.

1030 gold bowls, 410 silver bowls of a matching kind, and 1,000 other objects.

10Thirty basons of gold, silver basons of a second sort four hundred and ten, and other vessels a thousand.

Note"Of a second sort" renders a Hebrew word of unclear sense: it may mean second-rate, of a second kind, or duplicates matching the first set. The translators of the King James left the ambiguity standing rather than resolving it.

11All the gold and silver objects together came to 5,400. Sheshbazzar brought all of these with him when the exiles were brought up from Babylon to Jerusalem.

11All the vessels of gold and of silver were five thousand and four hundred. All these did Sheshbazzar bring up with them of the captivity that were brought up from Babylon unto Jerusalem.

NoteThe listed items add up to about 2,500, not 5,400, and the discrepancy is in the Hebrew text itself; the ancient Greek version and the book known as 1 Esdras give different figures again, so the numbers were already unstable in antiquity. "Them of the captivity" in the King James simply means the deported community, the exiles as a group.