Isaiah 44:28-45:7
My shepherd, my anointed
Named before he exists, told that the gates will be opened before him and the crooked places made straight, and told twice that he has not known the God who is girding him.
People of the Bible
Cyrus
Named by Isaiah about a hundred and fifty years before he was born, and called God’s anointed without ever knowing him.
Cyrus takes Babylon and, in the first year of his reign, issues a proclamation that reverses imperial policy: the God of heaven has charged him to build a house in Jerusalem, and whoever among the exiles wishes to go up may go, and his neighbours are to help him with silver, gold, goods and beasts. He returns the vessels Nebuchadnezzar had taken, counted out by number, five thousand four hundred of them. The same decree closes the book of Chronicles, which means the Hebrew Bible ends with permission to go home.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Cyrus
- 01
- 02
2 Chronicles 36:22-23
The last words of the Hebrew Bible
The LORD stirred up his spirit and he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom. The Hebrew order of the books ends on a sentence that is an invitation: let him go up.
- 03
Ezra 1:1-4
Who is there among you of all his people
The decree is voluntary rather than compulsory, and it puts the burden on the neighbours who stay: let the men of his place help him with silver, gold, goods and beasts, besides the freewill offering.
- 04
Ezra 1:7-11
The vessels counted out
Everything Nebuchadnezzar had put in the house of his gods is brought out by the treasurer and numbered to Sheshbazzar, thirty chargers of gold, a thousand of silver, and the rest, five thousand four hundred in all.
Why it matters
Isaiah names him, calls him God’s shepherd and his anointed, says he will hold his right hand to subdue nations and open the two leaved gates, and adds the line that makes the whole thing uncomfortable and exact: I have surnamed you, though you have not known me. Cyrus is the clearest statement in the Old Testament that God uses people entirely outside the covenant to keep promises made inside it, and that the person being used need not be aware of it.
2 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
