Cyrus king of Persia (547-517 BCE) captured the city of Babylon peacefully and without any fighting in the fall of 539 BCE. He ruled the city directly for nine consecutive years (539-530 BCE). After this he abdicated the throne of Babylon in 530 BCE and put Darayosh (Darius) the Mede, the illegitimate son of his maternal uncle “Akhashorosh” (Cyaxares II),[1] son of Astyages (585-550 BCE),[2] son of Cyaxares I on the throne at Babylon at the age of sixty-two (Dan 9:1).
European scholarship does not accept the above chronology. It also denies that the biblical king Darayosh the Mede was a real person. This article dismisses the European reconstruction of the Persian Empire in favor of what the scriptures state. Whenever a heathen historian from antiquity corroborates the scriptures, or their testimony is not out of line with the scriptures, we may or may not cite their testimony. When these writers deviate from our holy scriptures and relate something contrary to what our own prophets wrote down then we dismiss that testimony. Straight like that. The door is that way if you disagree with the methodology.
Darayosh the Mede reigned ten years as king of Babylon (530-520 BCE) and then Nabonidus II[3] son of Nabonidus I (556-539 BCE) revolted in 520 BCE. Darayosh the Mede returned to Media at this time and took the prophet Danay’al (Daniel) with him.[4] When Cyrus retook Babylon from the rebels in 520 BCE he set aside a royal residence and several palaces within that city for Darayosh’s father Cyaxares II, i.e. Akhashorosh.[5]
It was at this time, in the spring of 519 BCE, i.e. the first year of Cyrus’s second throne tenure at Babylon and the 70th year of the desolations of Yaroshalam (589/8-519 BCE), that Cyrus issued the order for the temple of YA’OH to be rebuilt in Yaroshalam (2 Chronicles 36:22-23; Dan 9:25). Since Yaroshalam’s desolations began with the invasion of Nabo-chadar-atsar (Nebuchadnezzar II) king of Babylon in 589/8 BCE[6] the 70 years of desolations for Yaroshalam did not reach their conclusion until 519 BCE.
Let me pull over and address an objection to 519 BCE. The scripture plainly states that the end of the 70 years of desolations for the city of Yaroshalam (Jerusalem) was the first year of Cyrus when he issued the decree to restore the temple. It says this clear as day in 2 Chronicles 36:21-23.
The “desolations” of the city began, as I said, when the Neo-Babylonian army of Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 BCE) began their desolating, rampaging siege of the city in 589/8 BCE which was the 9th year of Tsadak-Ya’oh (Zedekiah) king of Ya’ohdah (Judah). This is stated in Ezek 24:1-2; 2 Kings 25:1; and Jer 39:1. The exact day that the desolation of the city started was Month 10, Day 10, Year 9 of Tsadak-Ya’oh. This converts to Friday, Jan 14, 588 BCE in the pagan Julian calendar.
Now if the first year of Cyrus when he issued his decree to restore the temple was 538 BCE, as European scholars claim and as uneducated parakeets regurgitate, then you do not have 70 years from 588 BCE to 538 BCE do you? How mathematically challenged must you be not to see that the year 588 BCE to 538 BCE is just 51 years and not 70 years? We stay with the scriptures. Let the Europeans believe whatever they wish to believe.
When you count down 70 years (exclusive counting) from 589 BCE, or by inclusive counting from 588 BCE, then the 70th year of the desolations of Yaroshalam will correspond to 519 BCE. 588 is the first year of the desolation, 587 is the second year of the desolation, 586 is the third year of the desolation, 585 is the fourth year of the desolation, 584 is the fifth year of the desolation. And so on, and so on.
The Cyrus decree of 519 BCE did not mention rebuilding the city of Yaroshalam explicitly but this is clearly implied since the city would have to be populated by priests, temple staff, and numerous animals in order for the temple to be fully functional once again.
We must not fail to notice that the Cyrus decree called for a drastically reduced structure compared to the dimensions of the first temple King Shalamah (Solomon) built centuries earlier.[7] Cyrus did not allow the temple to be rebuilt according to its original grandiose size. The actual decree in Aramaic from the royal archives of Ecbatana in Media is quoted verbatim in Ezra 6:3-5, and paraphrases of it in Ghabaray (Biblical Hebrew) are given in 2 Chronicles 36:22-23 and Ezra 1:1-4.
When Herod the Edomite became king centuries later he brought up how Cyrus ordered the construction of a diminutive temple and how inferior it was compared to the first temple King Shalamah built. Herod used this as a pretext to completely dismantle the second temple and to build a new one so it would be larger than the measurements Cyrus specified.
In the first year of the return under Cyrus, in the seventh month, the returnees rebuilt the altar in its place, sacrifices were resumed, and the feast of tabernacles was observed that same month (Ezra 3:1-7). In the second year of the return, in the second month, the returnees began to build the foundation for the new temple (Ezra 3:8-13), but their heathen adversaries in the land heard about it and demanded that they be allowed to build with them (Ezra 4:1-3). When their demands were denied they prevented the returnees from finishing the foundation of the new temple (Ezra 4:4-5). Cyrus did nothing to check these heathens and they blocked the building project during the entire time that Cyrus was alive.
In fact, the heathens in the holy land even went around Cyrus and appealed to Akhashorosh (Cyaxares II). At the beginning of his reign (i.e. his regency in Babylon which began with the suppression of the revolt in 520 BCE) they wrote him a letter of accusation against the returnees in Ya’ohdah and Yaroshalam (Ezra 4:6). But Akhashorosh died very shortly after this and his son Darayosh, the former king of Babylon, then succeeded to throne of Ecbatana as the king of Media.
Cyrus appointed his son Cambyses to be king of Babylon in the fall of 519 BCE. When Cyrus was killed in battle two years later in 517 BCE it was the first year of Darayosh the Mede in Media. The foundation of the temple in Yaroshalam was still not finished.
Pay careful attention to the fact that Cyrus did not build the temple nor the city. He merely handed down an order for the temple to be rebuilt but he did not lift a finger to make sure his order was obeyed and carried out in his lifetime. He apparently was too busy with other concerns and did not care. It was not a priority to him. Hence the heathens in the holy land who openly defied his order were not fearful of any consequences. They wasted no time after news of Cyrus’s death became known and immediately wrote a letter of accusation against the returnees to Cambyses who had now become the supreme ruler of the Persian Empire. Upon reviewing the chronicles of Ya’ohdah and Yaroshalam Cambyses revoked his deceased father’s decree and put a complete stop to the rebuilding work in 517 BCE (Ezra 4:6-23).[8]
At the beginning of the following year in 516 BCE, in the second year of Darayosh the Mede in Ecbatana, Zarababal (Zerubabel), the palace guard and future governor of Ya’ohdah, was able to persuade Darayosh during a feast held in the first month of the year to revitalize the defunct Cyrus decree which Cambyses basically tore to shreds (1 Esdras 3-4). This “second year of Darayosh” is the year mentioned in Ezra 4:24 and in the books of the prophets Zachar-Ya’oh (Zechariah) and Khag-Ya’oh (Haggai). The holy temple vessels which Cyrus had set aside could now leave Babylon and return to Yaroshalam under Shashbazar the man Cyrus appointed governor of the province of Ya’ohdah (Ezra 1:7-11; 5:14-16; 1 Esdras 2:12-15; 4:57).
Again, notice carefully that Cyrus did not take any real interest to see to it that the holy vessels of the temple he had set apart were returned to Yaroshalam during the last two years of his life from 519 BCE to 517 BCE. These two years of complete disinterest on his part are mentioned in 1 Esdras 7:73.
It was Darayosh the Mede not Cyrus who returned the holy vessels in 516 BCE by the hand of the governor Shashbazar. Cambyses approved the decision of Darayosh and honored the Cyrus decree (Ezra 6:14).[9] Shashbazar also worked on laying the foundation of the temple at that time, but Shashbazar evidently died in 516 BCE and construction of the temple was called off once again.
With this new setback happening just after the holy vessels of the temple were sent back to Yaroshalam in the second year of Darayosh the Mede in 516 BCE the sentiment of the returnees in the holy land was that it was not yet time to rebuild the temple but time to build their own homes (Khag-Ya’oh 1:1-6). The prophets Khag-Ya’oh and Zachar-Ya’oh inspired the returnees not to abandon hope. Zarababal succeeded Shashbazar as govenor and then he and Ya’ohshai the high priest went back to work on the temple on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month in the second year of Darayosh the Mede (Khag-Ya’oh 1:12-15).[10]
When Darayosh Hystaspes became king (509-473 BCE) the heathens in the holy land wrote to him in the second year of his reign in 508 BCE in a renewed attempt to stop the returnees from rebuilding (Ezra 5:3-17). This Darayosh was unaware of the Cyrus decree of 519 BCE and also the endorsement of that decree by Darayosh the Mede in 516 BCE. He ordered a search for the original decree in Babylon to see if it even existed. The decree was not found there. It was found instead in the archives of Ecbtana in Media (Ezra 6:1-5) where Darayosh the Mede presumably transferred it.
It was this Darayosh Hystaspes who played a key role in the mysterious death of Cambyses in 510 BCE and the overthrew the dynasty of Cryus in 510 BCE by killing Cyrus’s son Barziya (511-510 BCE), and then Cyrus’s other son Vahyazdata in 509 BCE. Cambyses, Barziya, and Vahyazdata are the three kings of Persia who succeeded Cyrus according to Dan 11:2. The fourth king was Darayosh Hystaspes. To legitimize his hostile takeover Darayosh Hystaspes crafted a lie and claimed Barziya and Vahyazdata were imposters who fooled everyone and impersonated the sons of Cyrus.
Nevertheless, it was in the time of Darayosh Hystaspes that YA’OH shook heaven and earth in the form of the major uprisings that Darayosh Hystaspes had to suppress throughout the empire because the masses did not believe his propaganda that Barziya and Vahyazdata were pretenders.
Zarababal was confimed as the “signet” of YA’OH (Hag 2:20-23) after the tumultuous first year of Darayosh Hystaspes, effectively reversing the curse of Zarababal’s royal ancestor King Ya’oh-yachayn (Jehoachin) who was the rejected signet (Jer 22:24). As such, he was given the green light to resume the construction of the second temple in 508 BCE (Ezra 6:6-12) and he completed the work four years later in 504/3 BCE, the sixth year of Darayosh Hystaspes, and in the month of Adar in the Babylonian lunar calendar (Ezra 6:13-15; 1 Esdras 7:5).
Not only was a second temple built by Zarababal Ban Sha’althay’al and the high priest Ya’ohshai Ban Ya’ohtsadak, but a later house surpassing the first temple of King Shalamah in glory is prophesied to be built and shalom will be given in the place of that later house (Hag 2:6-9). This prophecy cannot be describing the second temple since that temple never surpassed the first temple in glory. The second temple also did not have the Ark of the Covenant and it was eventually dismantled and replaced with a new temple built by Herod the Great in 22 BCE.[11] Nor was shalom and stability ever established in the place of the second temple.
It was not long after the city of Yaroshalam was rebuilt by Zarababal that the returnees and the priests defiled the temple and disturbed the peace by their alliances with heathens and by their marriages to heathen women. The reforms of Ghazar’a cleaned this up in the early years of Xerxes (486-465 BCE),[12] but the city came under attack sometime after the death of Ghazar’a and Nakham-Ya’oh (Nehemiah) had to come from Persia and perform major repairs to the city wall during the reign of Artaxerxes I (465-424 BCE).
After the death of Alexander the great in 323 BCE the holy land was caught between the wars of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kings of Egypt and Syria, respectively, and both dynasties violated the second temple. The Maccabees cleaned and rededicated the second temple after it had been polluted during the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-163 BCE), but that would not be the last time the second temple was defiled. The Roman general Pompey defiled the second temple again when he captured Yaroshalam in the fall of 63 BCE. When Herod the Great became king in 36 BCE the second temple was defiled yet again, for it had now come under the control of an Edomite Roman loyalist who appointed and demoted high priests of his own choosing and he dismantled the entire temple and replaced it with his own third temple redesign. The successors of Herod the Great maintained oversight of the third temple until the Herodian Agrippa II was ousted in 65 CE. This was followed by the outbreak of the great war against Rome the following year in 66 CE.
Indeed, the second temple and third temple periods from the decree of Cyrus in 519 BCE all the way down to the Roman destruction of Yaroshalam in 70 CE did not witness shalom and stability but “in distress are the times” (Dan 9:25). Thus, we are approaching the day when a glorious new tabernacle of YA’OH will be reared up and shalom will be given in the place of this new tabernacle’s location.
“For thus says YA’OH tsaba’oth: Once more, a little it is, and I am the one causing to shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the heathens, and it will come, the desire of all the peoples, and I will fill that house glory, says YA’OH tsaba’oth. Mine is the silver and mine is the gold, says YA’OH tsaba’oth. Greater will be the glory of that latter house than the first, says YA’OH tsaba’oth; and in that place will I give shalom says YA’OH tsaba’oth” (Khag-Ya’oh 2:6-9).
The glorious house that the prophet Khag-Ya’oh (Haggai) describes has not been built yet. The second temple stood from 503 BCE until Herod the Great dismantled it in 22 BCE. It never surpassed the first temple in glory and it was never a place of shalom during its entire 482-year existence. Herod’s temple is excluded from this prophecy since it was built by an Edomite and the Romans demolished it in 70 CE. Moreover, neither the second temple built by Zarababal, nor the third temple built by Herod the Great, possessed the “desire of all the peoples” which is clearly a reference to the holy Ark of the Covenant which contained the two tablets of the testimony.
The house the prophet Khag-Ya’oh describes is also not to be confused with the fixed temple building that the prophet Ya’oh-khazak-al (Ezekiel) prophesied about. That temple will be built by our people after they return to take possession of the promised land, but a “tabernacle” (not a fixed temple building) will also be with them as well as that temple (Ya’oh-khazak-al [Ezekiel] 37:26-28). Ya’oh-khazak-al does not say the people will build this “tabernacle” after they return to the land. He only says that about the fixed temple building. It follows LOGICALLY that a tabernacle will be built prior to the return to the land and the people will bring it with them. It will exist before the final temple building.
“And I will cut for them a covenant of shalom, an covenant everlasting will it be with them. And I will put them, and I will cause to multiply them, and I will put my makdash (temple) in the midst of them forever. And also my mashchan (tabernacle) will be with them, and I will be to them for a Higher Power, and they will be to me for a nation. And they will know, the peoples, that I YA’OH am the one who sanctifies Ya’oh-shar-al when it is that my temple is among them forever” (Ya’oh-khazak-al 37:26-28).
“Gaze upon Tsayon, the city of our appointed feast times. Your eyes will see it, oh Yaroshalam, a quiet habitation. The TABERNACLE wont be taken down. The stakes thereof will not be moved. And all its cords will not be broken” (Yashai-Ya’oh 33:20).
Tsayon (Zion) is the nation of redeemed ompp who escape the sword. They are Yaroshalam. The city is the city they build in the wilderness where the name YA’OH is being proclaimed by a ravenous bird, and where they will return to keep ALL the covenant and the feasts and the sacrifices.
The tabernacce they build in the wilderness will not move from place to place like the first one that Mashah built in the first wilderness. Neither shall this new tabernacle ever be broken or defiled. It will be glorious and the priests of Loay (Levi) who serve inside the tabernacle will be dressed gloriously. And there will be shalom in this place.
History will repeat itself. The tabernacle Mashah (Moses) built in the wilderness which had the testimony, i.e. the Ark of the Covenant, was brought into the promised land and a fixed temple was built by King Shalamah. Likewise, the tabernacle will be built in the second wilderness and the testimony will be recovered and put inside where it belongs. This tabernacle of the testimony will never be defiled or destroyed. It will be greater than all previous houses of YA’OH and it will be taken from the wilderness into the promised land where the fixed temple building described by the prophet Ya’oh-khazak-al will be constructed. Both the wilderness tabernacle of the testimony and a fixed temple building will stand in the holy land and YA’OH will dwell there among His people forever.
The first kingdom of heaven was established on earth after an Exodus and when the tabernacle was reared up in the first wilderness and YA’OH came down and dwelt among His people. This was before they began the conquest of the promised land. The kingdom will be renewed on earth according to the same pattern. Only this time the kingdom will never be destroyed and it will last forever. Take all the time you need to let this sink in.
His name is YA’OH
Always has been. Always will be.
NOTES
Second Temple Period: 519 BCE to 22 BCE Third Temple Period: 22 BCE to 70 CE
[2] Herodotus, Histories, 1.183. Astyages had a son named after his own father Cyaxares I according Xenophon, Cyropaedia, 1.5.2, 4. Cyaxares II had bastard sons and not legitimate heirs, cf. Xenophon, Cyropaedia, 8.5.19.
[3] Herodotus, Histories, 1.74; 1.188. Labynetos (Λαβύνητος) is a plausible corruption of no other Neo-Babylonian royal name except Nabonidus. Old attempts to equate Labynetos the elder and his son Labynetos the younger with king Nabonidus (556-539 BCE) and his oldest son Belšazzar, respectively, have lost all their interpretive force.
[4] Josephus, Antiquities, 10.11.4.
[5] Xenophon, Cyropaedia, 8.5.17.
[6] This is stated in Ezek 24:1-2; 2 Kings 25:1; and Jer 39:1. The exact day that the desolation of the city commenced was Month 10, Day 10, Year 9 of Tsadak-Ya’oh. This converts to Friday, Jan 14, 588 BCE in the pagan Julian calendar.
[7] Josephus, Antiquities, 15.11.1; Wars, 1.21.1.
[9] The second temple was built because the Cyrus decree of 519 BCE revoked by his son Cambyses in 517 BCE was resurrected the following year by Darayosh the Mede. Since Cambyses was the supreme ruler of the Persian Empire altering his order required Cambyses’s approval. Thus, Ezra 6:14 mentions the following three kings: Cyrus, Darayosh the Mede, and Cambyses (not Artaxerxes!). Whereas verse 15 mentions Darayosh Hystaspes seperately because he was the king in whose reign the second temple was actually built.
[10] Pagan Julian date: Tuesday, Oct. 12, 516 BCE.
[11] Josephus, Antiquities, 15.11.1. As for the absolute dating, it was the seventeenth year of Herod counting from his capture of Yaroshalam in 36 BCE when Ceasar Augustus visited Syria in 20 BCE (Jos., Antiq., 15.10.3; Dio Cassius, liv. 7. 4-6.), but when Josephus dates the building of Herod’s temple to his eighteenth year in 22 BCE he was counting from Herod’s appointment as king by the Roman senate in 39 BCE. This was also Herod’s fifteenth year when counting from his capture of Yaroshalam in 36 BCE (Jos., Wars, 1.21.1).
In the satanic gospel according to John, the Jews supposedly ask Jeebus how it would be possible for him to raise up the temple in a mere three days when it has taken forty-six years “to build” (John 2:13 – 3:21). The comparison is between the time it took historically to build Herod’s third temple versus the time Jeebus said he could build it. The third temple took one year and six months to build (Josephus, Antiquities, 15.11.6) not forty-six years! It was not a process lasting decades that was still ongoing until the first century. The heathen Greek author of the John gospel imputes an implausible ignorance of recent history on the part of the Jews, and thus we must judge the whole gospel encounter to be a literary fabrication.
[12] Xerxes became co-regent in 486 BCE during his father’s the 24th regnal year. The co-regency is attested by the Wadi Hammamat Inscription No. 13 which equates Year 36 of Darayosh Hystaspes with Year 13 of his son Xerxes. For the inscription, see Couyat, J. & Montet, P. Les inscriptions hieroglyphiques et hieratiques du Ouadi Hammamat (MIFAO 34). Le Caire Impr. de l’Institut francais d’archeologie orientale (1913), p. 39.