Cyrus,[[1]] of whom Ezra speaks in the first chapter of his book, was a very different king from Nebuchadnezzar.
Nebuchadnezzar loved to pull down and destroy nations; but the great wish of Cyrus was to build up and restore. The cuneiform writings of the old Babylonian and Assyrian kings consist mostly of long lists of the nations they led away into slavery and the towns they burnt with fire; but the inscriptions made by Cyrus, the Persian king, speak of the people he sent back to their homes. 'All their people I collected, and restored their habitations.'[[2]] And among these people, as the Bible tells us, were the Jews of Jerusalem.
Many and great were the difficulties before them; but led, during the reign of Artaxerxes, by Ezra and Nehemiah, they faced their troubles bravely, until at last the wall of Jerusalem was rebuilt, and the city restored to something of its old beauty.
What a time of joy and triumph! Hardly could the Jews believe that they were in their own dear city once again. Psalm cxxvi. describes this wonderful day.
'When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, The Lord hath done great things for them.' (Verses 1, 2.)
'We have sinned against the Lord, we have been untrue to our promises; but never again will we neglect His Book, nor forget His Law.'
'And all the people gathered themselves together as one man...; and they spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded to Israel.' (Nehemiah viii. 1.)
A solemn day that was, as we read in the Book of Nehemiah, a day of real returning to the Lord. Picture them standing there, those men and women and little children of Jerusalem; their faces would be worn with toil and hardship.
On a raised platform of wood stood Ezra ready with the rolls of the Books of the Law, and beside him were the interpreters.
For the people had been so long in a strange land that scarcely any of them could speak Hebrew; that is, the old Hebrew language in which King David wrote. If the Law of God was to be impressed afresh on the nation's heart that day, the scribes, the writers and the teachers must translate it into the language of their heathen conquerors.