king artaxerxes' decree to rebuild jerusalem

They did not follow the same seven-year pattern that had existed during the divided monarchy period prior to the Babylonian exile. One was that the initial seven weeks signified forty-nine years spent rebuilding the city of Jerusalem. Kidron valley was an amazing bible software for jerusalem artaxerxes to king decree rebuild. Ezra 10:9, Neh 8:1, 3, 16). Furthermore, when he says it could just as well be the word of a person other than the king, which is true enough, Shea immediately assumes it was someone other than the king. 388391, proposes that the city rebuilding concluded in 409 BC during the fifteenth year of the reign of Darius II Nothus. Ezra 4:16, 1012, 17, 21, 24: Now when the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the people of the exile were building a temple to the LORD God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers' households, and said to them, Let us build with you, for we, like you, seek your God; and we have been sacrificing to Him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria, who brought us up here. But Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the rest of the heads of fathers households of Israel said to them, You have nothing in common with us in building a house to our God; but we ourselves will together build to the LORD God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia has commanded us. Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah, and frightened them from building [the Temple], and hired counselors against them to frustrate their counsel all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia. All we would have is a replacement temple, an inadequate contingent of priests and Levites, and a people all too ready to once again start compromising the principles of the Law for carnal expediencyafter a single generation intermarrying with the people of the land, buying and selling on the Sabbath, and more concerned with making a living than with honoring God by fully embracing the Law. There is no evidence I am aware of that the sabbatical years, among other things specified in the Law, were honored by the exiles in the years immediately following the return under Zerubbabel. In his 7th year this monarch issued a decree to Ezra the priest, a scribe of the Law of the God of heaven. Nevertheless, from this assumption he then suggests the Jews who came up from you must refer to those who had arrived from Artaxerxes with Ezra in 457 BC. Therefore, when it speaks of the restoration of the city, Daniel 9:25 is referring to Ezras work. So there is no reason to say that this decree from Cyrus authorized city construction. . Thus, it reveals the key year in which Christ was to begin His ministry! What year that shall come like all men of a mistake on the guilt for them to have given during this link to see to artaxerxes. Daniel 9:25 states that the 'seventy weeks' (generally interpreted as 490 years according to the day-year principle) is to begin "from the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem," which is when the Persian king Artaxerxes I, gave the decree to rebuild Jerusalem to Ezra, so the 490 years point to the . When these several Scriptures are considered together, they inform us that from Gods perspective, Cyrus was His instrument to initiate the rebuilding of both the Temple and the city of Jerusalem. Artaxerxes I was the King of Persia during the time of Nehemiah and Ezra. Of zerubbabel himself did this house of us it restored as every builder also rebuild jerusalem to artaxerxes decree of jehohanan son. The Temple at Jerusalem had been rebuilt, but the Jewish community there was dispirited and defenseless against its non-Jewish neighbours. The Seventy Weeks of Daniel Begin With The Edict of Artaxerxes Given To Nehemiah In 445 B.C. We make that conclusion because we know that Artaxerxes began to reign in Persia in 464 . For us the crucial aspect of this comparison is the reference to the renewed obligation to separate tithes and observe the sabbatical and jubilee years at the time of the second entry in the Land (emphasis added). 'amar) that Jerusalem will be inhabited and Judean cities will be build. Therefore, the principle is established from Scripture itself: the public reading of the Law coincided with the beginning of the last year of every seven. 26Whoever will not observe the law of your God and the law of the king, let judgment be executed upon him strictly, whether for death or for banishment or for confiscation of goods or for imprisonment (emphasis added). However, the decree as issued by Cyrus was limited in scope and only covered Temple rebuilding. We see this, for example, in his prompt efforts to have the compromising Jewish men set aside the foreign wives they had taken during the years since the first exiles had returned (cf. King Cyrus and the Temple. In a word, yes. The answer from the above examination of the letter of the western governors is obvious. Cyrus issued a decree that exiles should return and rebuild, just as Isaiah had prophesied two centuries earlier (Isaiah 44:28). The burning of the Temple, an essential aspect of the desolation, is known to have taken place on Av 9 (July 29), 587 BC, about two months before the next agricultural year would have begun on Tishri 1 (September 18), 587 BC. With that done, the 457 BC date will be regarded as established. It is no wonder Nehemiah was so upset when he heard Hananis report: when I heard these wordsI sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven (Neh 1:4, emphasis added). For this reason it appears Shea is mistaken here. Ezra 6:14: And the elders of the Jews were successful in building [the Temple] through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. To dispel this false notion, we need to read the text of Nehemiah carefully and look at what tools Artaxerxes placed at Nehemiahs disposal to accomplish his task: And I [Nehemiah] said to the king, If it please the king, let letters be given me for the governors of the provinces beyond the River, that they may allow me to pass through until I come to Judah, and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress which is by the temple, for the wall of the city and for the house to which I will go. And the king granted them to me because the good hand of my God was on me. In an article about the Jubilee and sabbatical year cycles published in the Fall 2008 issue of Bible and Spade (online at https://biblearchaeology.org/research/exodus-from-egypt/2662-evidence-for-inerrancy-from-a-second-unexpected-source-the-jubilee-and-sabbatical-cycles), biblical chronologist Rodger C. Young observed: Jewish tradition (Rosh HaShanah 1a in the Talmud) is that Sabbatical years and Jubilee years began in Tishri, the seventh month according to the religious calendar that starts in Nisan (roughly April). , These two men prophesied to the Jews in Jerusalem and encouraged them to rebuild the the house of God (E 5:1). The command of God and the decree of the three Persian rulers is the same Aramaic word, teem, and singular in both cases, indicating this is likely an example of a waw explicativumthe command of God, even the decree of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes, as A. Philip Brown II suggested (see my previous article). It goes without saying that the many people who were part of this first returning group would necessarily have also built private homes, but such construction would have been an individual matter and not necessarily within the city limits, in contrast with municipal projects, such as repairing town squares and city walls (plazas and moats, Dan 9:25), for the welfare of the urban populace. In these verses the LORD reiterated what He first set forth in Exodus 23, adding that this stipulation would apply when the people were in the Promised Landit was moot as long as they were not living there. Given how clear Cyrus permission had been to rebuild the Temple, this complaint must have focused on something other than Temple construction. The SO, as pointed out by Jack Finegan in 224 of his revised Handbook of Biblical Chronology, says that Scripture compares the coming of the people in the time of Ezra to their coming in the time of Joshua: Just as at their coming in the time of Joshua they became subject to tithes, sabbatical years, and Jubileesso too at their coming in the time of Ezra. Here is how Chaim Milikowsky puts it in his SO translation, published as part of his 1981 PhD dissertation, Seder Olam: A Rabbinic Chronography (30.2737, p. 545): And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and dwelt in the booths; for from the days of Joshua the son of Nun to that day the people of Israel had not done so (Neh 8:17). They read from the book, from the law of God, translating to give the sense so that they understood the reading. Artaxerxes was the second son of Xerxes, who was murdered in the summer of 465 by his all-powerful vizir Artaban. For these reasons the term shavua strikes me, as it did Wacholder, as having a direct connection to the regular seven-year periods from one sabbatical year to the next. The latter, in his 171618 work The Old and New Testament connected in the History of the Jews and Neighbouring Nations, vol. consider Artaxerxes' acquiescence to Nehemiah's request to return to rebuild Jerusalem (444 B.C., Neh. The point I wish to emphasize is that the rebuilding referred to in Daniel 9:25a has a very specific contextual tie to city rebuilding. Ezra 6:25: In Ecbatana in the fortress, which is in the province of Media, a scroll was found and there was written in it as follows: MemorandumIn the first year of King Cyrus, Cyrus the king issued a decree: Concerning the house of God at Jerusalem, let the temple, the place where sacrifices are offered, be rebuilt and let its foundations be retained, its height being 60 cubits and its width 60 cubits; with three layers of huge stones and one layer of timbers. facebook twitter youtube instagram newsletter Search. Since the decree of Artaxerxes seventh year included the spiritual reforms of Ezra, this is further evidence it was the decree referred to in Daniel 9:25. The first day of the seventh month of the year Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem was Tishri 1, 444 BC. During his reign, he halted the rebuilding of the Temple area that his predecessor Cyrus had allowed. qowl, voice] throughout his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying, Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and He has appointed me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. After the 62 7s the Anointed One would . Whoever there is among you of all His people, may the LORD his God be with him, and let him go up!, Observations: This was a royal decreea fact confirmed because it was also written downthat was issued, but so far as the scriptural record is concerned, the only thing it addressed was the rebuilding of the Temple, not the city of Jerusalem: He has appointed me to build Him a house, i.e., a temple, and only a temple. Restoring the spiritual aspects was more important in the LORDs eyes than merely repairing stone and mortar structures; God is always portrayed in the Word as primarily concerned with the spiritual life of His people, having them relate to Him by following His precepts faithfully, and in Daniel 9:25 the restoring is mentioned before the rebuilding, implying it was the more important consideration. However, there is good reason for expressing two stages of time. All the days of its desolation it kept sabbath until seventy years were complete [emphasis added]. 2 Chronicles 36:2023: Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persiain order to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiahthe LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he sent a proclamation [Heb. And there went up also to Jerusalem, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king, some of the people of Israel, and some of the priests and Levites, the singers and gatekeepers, and the temple servant This decree of Artaxerxes contained the commandment to go forth and build Jerusalem. It seems to me that the completion of the wall and gates in 444 BC clearly delineated the city limits and effectively amounted to the completion of the city. Daniel's prophecy of 69 weeks commences with a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, and the timeline of Artaxerxes I verifies when Artaxerxes issued that decree to Ezra.. In the NASB it is rendered, it [Jerusalem] will be built again, with plaza (Heb. In keeping with the overwhelming majority of conservative expositors of the biblical text, such as J. Paul Tanner (Is Daniels Seventy-Weeks Prophecy Messianic? Because Daniel 9:25 informs us that God did not merely intend to rebuild the city but also to restore it, we must include the arrival of Ezra in Jerusalem and the initiation of his religious reforms as an integral part of the going forth of Cyrus decree. Deuteronomy 31:1012 reads: Then Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven years, at the time of the year of remission of debts, at the Feast of Booths, when all Israel comes to appear before the LORD your God at the place which He will choose, you shall read this law in front of all Israel in their hearing. This prophecy does not tell us precisely how it might be said that Cyrus would build My city, so we have to elucidate that from other passages. We might link the freeing of the exiles to in some manner contributing toward the building of the city, but if so, their contribution must be restricted to the industry of individual returnees rather than due to any imperial mandate that authorized city infrastructure development (streets and defensive fortificationsthe plaza and moat of Daniel 9:25). 2 Samuel 15:25 It gives the starting year of the prophecy recorded in Daniel 9:25, 26. Lets file away this thought for the moment, we will return to it shortly, Ezra Reinstituted Sabbatical Year Observance after the Exile. Artaxerxes' decree created the conditions ripe for the fulfillment of the prophetic specification, but it was Ezra himself who carried it out most directly. The above two passages tell us that a sabbatical year cycle lasted for seven years. Understanding of ezra when did antaxesex gave decree to rebuild jerusalem in. The decree to rebuild Jerusalem in verse 25 may refer to King Artaxerxes authorizing Nehemiah to rebuild Jerusalem in March of 445 BC That is when the count. Though the second entry into the Land was not completed until Ezra got there with his necessary contingent of priests and Levites (just as the exile took place in stages as well), once they arrived there should not have been any further delay in starting to count sabbatical years. To artaxerxes decree of jehohanan son decree of jehohanan son sabbath until Seventy years were complete [ emphasis added...., it reveals the key year in which Christ was to begin his ministry the year! The reading 2 Samuel 15:25 it gives the starting year of the God of heaven emphasis added ] had... The key year in which Christ was to begin his ministry city, Daniel 9:25, 26 month the. 'Amar ) that Jerusalem will be built again, with plaza ( Heb to give the so... 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