TO WHICH ARE ADDED THREE DISSERTATIONS, RP ANTIQUITIES OF THE JEWS. BOOK XI. CONTAINING THE INTERVAL OF TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTYTHREE YEARS FIVE MONTHS. FROM THE FIRST OF CYRUS TO THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT. CHAPTER I. How Cyrus, king of the Persians, delivered the Jews out of Babylon, and suffered them to return to their own country, and to build their temple, for which work he gave them money. § 1. In the first year of the reign of Cyrus, which was the seventieth from the day that our people were removed out of their own land into Babylon, God commiserated the captivity and calamity of these poor people, according as he had foretold to them by Jeremiah the prophet, before the destruction of the city, that after they had served Nebuchadnezzar and his posterity, and after they had undergone that servitude seventy years, he would restore them again to the land of their fathers, and they should build their temple, and enjoy their ancient prosperity. And these things God did afford them; for he stirred up the mind of Cyrus, and made him write this throughout all Asia: Thus saith Cyrus the king: Since God Almighty hath appointed me to be king of the habitable earth, I believe that he is that God which the nation of the Israelites worship, for indeed he foretold my name by the prophets, and that I a This Cyrus is called 'God's shepherd' by Xenophon, as well as by Isaiah, Isa. xliv. 28, as also it is said of him by the same prophet, that "I will make a man more precious than fine gold, even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir," Isa. xiii. 12; which character makes Xenophon's most excellent history of him very credible. VOL. II. B |