of their gods, whose images he restored to the capital city.  The temples as well as the walls of Babylon were rebuilt, and the king publicly proclaimed himself a devoted worshipper of Marduk and Nebo, the chief gods of the Babylonians.  Thus from the first the policy of Cyrus in treating conquered peoples was fundamentally different from that of the Babylonians and Assyrians.  They had sought to establish their power by crushing the conquered rather than by furthering their well-being; but Cyrus, by his many acts of clemency, aimed to secure and hold their loyalty.

VIII.  His Treatment of Conquered Peoples.  Cyrus showed the same wisdom in his treatment of the many petty peoples who had been ground down under the harsh rule of Babylon.  In one of his inscriptions he declares:  “The gods whose sanctuaries from of old had lain in ruins I brought back again to their dwelling-places and caused them to reside there forever.  All of the citizens of these lands I assembled and I restored them to their homes” (Cyrus Cyl., 31, 32).  In the light of this statement it is clear that the Jews, in common with other captive peoples, were given full permission to return to their homes and to rebuild their ruined temple.  The decree of Cyrus recorded in the Aramaic document preserved in Ezra 6:3-5 is apparently the Jewish version of the general decree which he issued.  It is also possible that he aided the vassal peoples in rebuilding their sanctuaries; for such action was in perfect accord with his wise policy.  He also intrusted the rulership of different kingdoms as far as possible to native princes.  In the Greek book of I Esdras has been preserved a list (which has fallen out of the biblical book of Ezra) of those who availed themselves of Cyrus’s permission to return to Palestine.  It includes simply the priest Jeshua, or Joshua, the lineal heir of the early Jerusalem priestly line of Zadok, and Zerubbabel, a descendant of the Judean royal family.  They doubtless took with them their immediate followers and were probably accompanied by a few exiles whose loyalty impelled them to leave the attractive opportunities in Babylon to face the dangers of the long journey and the greater perils in Palestine.

From Jeremiah 41:5 and Haggai 2:14 it appears that a rude altar had been built on the sacred rock at Jerusalem and that religious services were held on the site of the ruined temple soon after its destruction in 586 B.C.  With the gifts brought back by Zerubbabel and his followers, daily sacrifices were probably instituted on the restored altar under the direction of the priest Joshua (cf.  Hag. 2:10-14).  In the light, however, of the oldest records it is clear that the revival of the Judean community in Palestine was gradual and at first far from glorious.  The Jews were a broken-hearted, poverty-stricken, persecuted people, still crushed by the great calamity that had overtaken their nation.  The general return of the exiles was only a dream of the future, and, despite the general permission of Cyrus, the temple at Jerusalem still lay in ruins.