2 Chronicles 36:22-23--The Proclamation of Cyrus

2 Chronicles 36:22-23
English Standard Version
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The Proclamation of Cyrus
22 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: 23 “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, ‘The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the LORD his God be with him. Let him go up.’”

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I mentioned a bit last time how important these two short verses are.  Why not end where we did last time with the fulfillment of the prophecy about the LORD's wrath being poured out on them and the destruction of Jerusalem and all Judah with it?  There is good reason for the people to still hope, and that is the prophecy of Jeremiah that told them that this time of bondage would only last 70 years, a prophecy in the book of Isaiah (if you remember, Isaiah had been a priest and prophet in Judah long before this and is not around anymore, so the LORD told him the name of Cyrus in Isaiah 44 and 45 long before Cyrus even lived) and another prophecy in the book of Daniel (the Seventy Sevens) that this proclamation wouldn't just be the beginning of the time of the people to head home and rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple (see the books of Ezra and Nehemiah), but that it was the beginning of the countdown for when they should start looking for the Messiah to appear.  There would be exactly 490 "prophetic years" (360 days--12 months of 30 days each) between the proclamation and when Messiah was "cut off."  Well, obviously He'd have to appear before He would be "cut off" and the wise men knew to look for His star to appear because of the words of Baalam in the book of Numbers.  Also, Simeon and Anna who were full of the Holy Spirit knew to expect Him to appear around that time and were in the Temple daily awaiting His arrival.  The rest of the world though mostly missed it.

Look at how the LORD turns the hearts of these foreign kings just like he said he could do in Proverbs 21:1, "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever He will."  We see that the LORD still has His agents at work to accomplish His perfect will and pleasure.  Many times, they are Jews, sometimes they are Gentiles.  The LORD has always been about the business of redeeming His people from every tribe tongue and nation to Himself, and it sounds to me like we can expect King Cyrus to be among the Old Testament saints that will be in the New Heaven and the New Earth with us--that's not for me to judge, but his proclamation certainly makes it sound that way.  While not in this passage, we also heard a lot about King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in the previous passages and I think we see his salvation story in the book of Daniel and together God uses these two kings, along with the King Ahasuerus from the book of Esther to change the hearts of many of pagan people who lived in the areas that we might now call the Middle East.  Certainly, the groundwork has been laid for people of these regions to know the name of the LORD and to be exposed to the word of His prophets, to be exposed to His Law, and to know in part His plan of salvation for all peoples through the one that would be called Messiah in Hebrew or Christ in Greek.

Cyrus was not the Christ himself--though he was an Old Testament prophetic type of Christ--a person that gives a glimpse at the kind of things that Messiah will ultimately do perfectly.  He was God's agent, even though he was not Jewish.  That's important, and he loved the LORD and the people of the LORD, and the LORD blessed Him and His people for this because of the Abrahamic Covenant.  That's important too.  It is unlikely that Cyrus understood his place in history, and it's also unlikely that he knew the prophecy of Isaiah and was trying to fulfill it (imagine his pagan parents having to know the prophecy and choose his name intentionally and condition him to know his purpose was to fulfill the prophecy spoken by the God of a foreign land whose people would become slaves at the hands of the Babylonians and that meant that somehow the Medes and Persians would have to overthrow Babylon so that Cyrus might become king and fulfill this prophecy.  That's a preposterous notion, yet there are people that think like this not only about Cyrus, but about Jesus.  The prophecies are there to point to the fact that God has known the plan all along and that things are going according to His plan, not that we are to read them and try and make them happen.  This will be an important distinction as we start to get into reading the Prophets soon.  When the LORD speaks of the future, it's no different than Him speaking of the past of the present.  Because He is the "I AM" and ever-present (there is no linear time for Him, He sees everything as if it is right now), then telling His servants exactly what will happen and when it will happen when it accomplishes His purposes to do so is no difficult thing for Him.  Therefore, we can trust in the prophetic words of the Bible as if they are things that have already happened and are therefore certain to happen just as the LORD said.

With this in mind we have great hope moving forward from this ending that seemed rather dark because we know that the LORD's people will return to the Land, we know that Jerusalem will be rebuilt, and even more importantly, we know that the Davidic Covenant will be fulfilled, and Messiah will appear--and we even have some idea when we should expect Him to show up.  Maybe now you get some idea how Jesus came "in the fullness of time" (at just the right time) and why Jesus spoke to the religious leaders like if they knew their Old Testament Scriptures as well as they claimed they did, they should have had no problem identifying Him for who He was--King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Son of God, Son of Man, and Savior of the World, just to name a few!