Pagan Empire: Ezra Nehemiah 2

Introduction

The world is a messy place. Part of the mess for believers is learning to tell the difference between situations that call for martyrdom and situations that call for godly acquiesence. One of the more common set-ups where such wisdom is required is when pagan empires are in control. To what extent are we godly members of such a society, and to what extent are we to be radically distinct from it?

The Text:

“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, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah . . .” (Ezra 1:1-11).

Overview:

Cyrus is a pagan king, and yet it was the Lord who stirred up his spirit to make the proclamation that he made (v. 1). In the prophetic word of Isaiah, Cyrus is even called a messiah (Is. 45:1). Cyrus acknowledges that it was the “Lord God of heaven” who granted his authority, and who tasked him with the responsibility to build a Temple in Jerusalem (v. 2). So the pagan king asks, “Are there any Jews who will go?” (v. 3). Further, the Jews who do not return are charged to help with the task financially (v. 4). In response, three tribes rose up—Judah, Benjamin, and Levi—to return to their ancestral home to build the house of the Lord (v. 5). In addition, from those around there was an outpouring of financial support, willingly offered (v. 6). For his part, Cyrus brought out the vessels from the house of the Lord that Nebuchadnezzar had captured and placed before his pagan gods (v. 7). Midredath the treasurer gave a careful accounting of them to Sheshbazzar, the prince of Judah (v. 8). The details of the transferred treasure were then given (vv. 9-11).

The Way of Pagan Emperors:

What Cyrus says here in our text sounds pretty good. He wants to build a Temple to the true God, he acknowledges that the true God gave him authority over all the nations, and he requires the work be done by the people of God. Moreover, we learn here that the Spirit of God really did motivate him to do this—the heart of the king is in the Lord’s hand (Prov. 21:1). And God is at work in Cyrus in Isaiah (Is. 45:1).

But right around the same time, for example, Cyrus gave orders to have the Temple of Sin at Ur of the Chaldees restored. Sin was not our “sin,” but rather was a moon god. Cyrus went so far as to have the bricks for that temple inscribed with the following: “Sin, the illuminator of heaven and earth, with his favourite sign delivered into my hand the four quarters of the world, and I returned the gods to their shrines. The great gods have delivered all the lands into my hands: the land I have caused to dwell in peaceful habitation.”

Cyrus was a religious pragmatist, and believed in appeasing all the gods. And yet, although he had his own compromised and sinful motives, the Spirit of the Lord on him was not constrained by those motives. And this is why the faithful living under pagan emperors must learn to distinguish the work of God and the work of man. An artifact called the Cyrus Prism was discovered in 1879, and here is an excerpt that describes very well the policy of Cyrus, along with his reasons for it. But we must not let these reasons trump what the Bible says the real reason was.

I am Cyrus, King of the World . . . whose rule Bel and Nebo love, whom they want as king to please their hearts . . . Marduk, the great lord, induced the magnanimous inhabitants of Babylon to love me, and I was daily endeavoring to worship him . . . I returned to these sacred cities on the other side of the Tigris the sanctuaries of which have been ruins for a long time, the images which used to live therein and established for them permanent sanctuaries. I also gathered all their former inhabitants and returned them to their habitations. Furthermore, I resettled upon the command of Marduk, the great lord, all the gods of Kiengir and Akkad whom Nabonidus had brought into Babylon to the anger of the lord of the gods, unharmed, in their former temples, the places which make them happy.

Two Kinds of Empire:

Empires come in two kinds. There is the ideological empire, the kind that is fundamentally at war with all who do not conform to its dictates. The attempted reign of Marxism was like this, and the expanding Muslim world is like this. Conform or die. We are accustomed to think of this kind of empire as the only kind of tyranny there is. But we have to be careful. The other kind of empire is the syncretistic empire, the pragmatic empire. You can worship whoever you want, so long as you do nothing to challenge the real god of the system, which is the life of the empire itself. Rome was like this, and the rising American empire is like this. The empire of Cyrus was like this, and the lives of Ezra and Nehemiah provide us with a great deal of wisdom in how to live our lives in a very similar situation.

Divine Sovereignty:

The Spirit of God is not hamstrung by the presence of human sin. We persist in thinking that divine action and human action displace one another, as though they were a couple of billiard balls. If one moves in, the other moves out. But the sin of Cyrus was the spirit of God stirring him up in order to bless the Jews. The fact that he thought he was doing the same thing (for the same reasons) to all the gods of all the other peoples did not alter what was actually happening. God draws straight with crooked lines. God is sovereign. And this glorious dogma is saying much more than just the truth that God is big. God is the uncreated Creator—He is not Zeus, or Marduk. Those outside cannot be expected to know this, but we are His people, and we must know it.

The Issue Is Always Worship:

In a syncretistic empire, what are the lines past which we may not go? The line of division is always worship. While we may cooperate with unbelievers on various projects and tasks, and may even take help from them, we may not do so if the price on the tag spells “compromise in worship.” And compromise in worship would be defined as altering or modifying our own worship of the true God to suit them (Dan. 6:11), or of joining with them in the worship of their deities—even if they allow us to continue worshiping our God as well (Dan. 3:12-14). Daniel would not stop praying to his God in order to please them. His faith had nothing to do with them. And his three friends would not bow down to the image of Nebuchadnezzar, because he was not the true God.

The United States is moving into an imperial era. We do not claim to know all the details concerning this, but the broad outlines seem clear. And it is equally clear that our empire is doing what all pragmatic and mercantile empires do—they are trying to get all the gods into the same Temple, into the same National Cathedral. Let them try. But we must not go there with them. And may a faithful Christian serve in the president’s cabinet? Of course. For either party? Of course. And may such a man attend the mandatory worship services in the Cathedral? Of course not. And if there were such a faithful Christian, he would (in the current climate) find himself in a showdown with the powers that be, just like Daniel. And we would all know his name, just like we do Daniel’s. But it does not yet appear that we have faithful men with the understanding of Daniel, Ezra, or Nehemiah.