The Art of Peace – a submission to Herod on his accession to the throne of Judea in 37 BCE
Your Majesty, I humbly thank-you for allowing me to make this report on events that took place in your new kingdom, five hundred and fifty years ago. It is based predominantly on the Judean books of Kings and the Judean story of Ezra.
Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, was skilled in the art of war. He laid siege to the city of Jerusalem, starving to submission its inhabitants from the tribes of Benjamin and Judah. Nebuchadnezzar captured Zedekiah their king, killed his sons before him and then gouged out his eyes. He destroyed the temple and stole its sacred vessels. He took most of the people of Benjamin and Judah away to be slaves, exiles in his city of Babylon (some did escape and found refuge in Egypt). Nebuchadnezzar’s empire was lost to the Medes and the Persians. According to the prophecy of Daniel, he was haunted by a voice, slept alone in the fields and ate of the grass.
King Cyrus of Persia allowed the exiles from Benjamin and Judah to return to their homeland, which was now in his governed province of Beyond Euphrates. He let them take their gold and silver (he made the inventories, appointed the treasurers), and gave back the sacred vessels; he paid carpenters and masons from Tyre and Sidon to help them rebuild their temple amidst their ruined city of Jerusalem.
Northern tribes in the land of Samaria, who had been united with Benjamin and Judah under the reigns of David and Solomon and had worshipped the same god, offered to help rebuild the temple, so they too could worship there. But the men of Benjamin and Judah said, “We alone are to build it, for God rescued only us, by decree of Cyrus, the king of Persia, who rules in Babylon!”.
When Cyrus died, the northern tribes of Samaria obstructed Benjamin and Judah, bribing officials and writing letters to Artaxerxes, the new Persian King. They claimed the Judeans would rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and withhold taxes. So, the governor of Beyond-Euphrates was commanded to ensure that work on the temple was stopped.
When Artaxerxes died and Darius became King of Persia, the growing tribes of Judah and Benjamin began to rebuild the temple once again. Tattenai, the province’s new governor, was subtle and did not rush his soldiers to battle. Instead, he asked Darius to search the archives for the old decrees of Cyrus. Darius read, considered and then upheld those decrees. He gave money, livestock and oil, which allowed the Judeans and Benjaminites to rebuild the temple without the help of the Samarians.
The men of Judah and Benjamin did not form alliances or marriages with the Samarians or other tribes, ostensibly because their prophets said that foreign women would lead them astray, but probably because, partially at least, their priests wanted to run the temple their own way, and almost certainly because they were afraid of what the Persians would say. And so, those men of Judah and Benjamin that did have them did cast away their foreign wives on a rainy day and also their children. It is recorded in their Book of Genesis that an ancestor called Abraham acted in a similar manner.
Your Majesty, King Herod of Edom, friend of Rome and ruler of Judea, your historians have questioned the Book of Ezra’s accuracy in its ordering of the reigns of Cyrus, Artaxerxes and Darius, but every modern ruler must admire its account of a glorious art of peace. Those Persian kings, by investing in Jerusalem’s temple, repatriating its people and appointing a governor who was cautious and tactful, were able, without the wretched cost of war, to raise taxes from a city which, in Solomon’s days, had been united with Samaria and allied to Egypt by marriage. In those days, the temple walls had been of stone and cedar, pine and wild olive wood overlaid with gold; there were carved figures of palm trees, pomegranates, open flowers and cherubim with wide spread wings.
2020