RESTORATION. The period of time covered by the Restoration will be regarded as beginning about 515 b.c. and terminating with the time of Malachi, about 450 b.c. Once the edict of Cyrus, proclaimed in 538 b.c., had given official permission for expatriate groups in Babylonia to return to their homelands and renew the pattern of their former ways of life those members of the captive Jewish population who had caught the vision of a new existence in Judaea along theocratic lines, as indicated by Ezekiel, were not slow to begin the arduous journey back to the desolated homeland. As the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah make plain (see Haggai; Zechariah), the initial enthusiasm which the returned exiles had manifested for the rebuilding of the ruined Temple became dissipated at a comparatively early period. The most that the inhabitants of Jerusalem were apparently willing or able to do was the reconstruction of their own houses in the city. However, the situation was remedied by the timely intervention of Haggai and Zechariah in 520 b.c., and five years later the successor to the Temple of Solomon was dedicated amid scenes of great rejoicing.

The policy of the Pers. rulers was remarkable for the amount of political freedom which was given to the constituent elements of the empire. This enlightened attitude of the government presented certain difficulties for the Persians initially, for after the suicide of Cambyses II, son of Cyrus in 522 b.c., some of the provinces which Cyrus had conquered tried to break away from imperial rule. However, order was finally restored by an Achaemenid prince named Darius the Great (522-486 b.c.), but while he was regaining control of the situation, the people of Judaea managed to establish some degree of independence. When Darius finally imposed imperial rule he followed a policy of benevolence toward the returned exiles in Judaea. According to Ezra 6:13 a military governor named Tattenai was in charge of the Pers. province of Judah, and the state was encouraged to function as a religious rather than a political entity with Josiah appointed as high priest in the time of Haggai. Precisely what happened to Zerubbabel after 515 b.c. is unknown, but it has been suggested that he either died or was removed from office by the Pers. government as a precautionary measure against the establishing of a Judean state independent of Pers. control. From that time onward the political situation in Judah seems to have been stabilized by the formulation of a theocratic system supported by the central Pers. administration.

Of the fifty-seven years which followed the dedication of the second Temple, the Book of Ezra has nothing to report. This situation is unfortunate, for this particular period of Biblical history is lacking in extensive documentation. As far as the Pers. empire was concerned, the death of Darius I in 486 b.c. was followed by the accession of his son Xerxes I, who ruled for twenty years from 485 b.c. This man, to whom there is a possible reference under the name of Ahasuerus in Ezra 4:6, maintained the administration of the empire at a high level of efficiency, and crushed the political aspirations of some of his more restless subjects. An inscr. from his reign, which was found in 1939 at Persepolis, demonstrated the vigor of his rule and made clear his zeal for the Pers. god Ahuramazda: “When I became king there were among those lands...which rebelled. Then Ahuramazda helped me. By Ahuramazda’s will such lands I conquered...this which I did I achieved it all by the will of Ahuramazda....” When Xerxes died in 465 b.c. he was succeeded by his second son Artaxerxes I Longimanus (464-424 b.c.), who is evidently the Artaxerxes mentioned in Ezra 4:7-23.

For the inhabitants of Judaea the period of the restoration was marked by a valiant struggle to overcome the poverty which was evident on every hand. The city of Jerusalem was far from being rebuilt and though the Temple had been completed, there were still no walls to protect the city dwellers from their enemies in the locality. Consequently Samaritans and Arabs could enter the city and plunder the crops whenever they chose. This dispiriting fact, along with the waning of enthusiasm for further building activity after the Temple had been restored, compelled the Jews to eke out a precarious existence in and around Jerusalem.

In the midst of this forbidding situation help arrived rather unexpectedly from Jews who were scattered throughout the Pers. empire and who were concerned about the welfare of the struggling repatriates in Judea. These people brought their influence to bear upon the central administration, with the result that in 458 b.c. Artaxerxes appointed Ezra the scribe, a member of a Jewish priestly family, as a royal commissioner for Jewish affairs in Judea. Ezra arrived in Jerusalem armed with a decree which required the Jews to obey his instructions regarding the regulating of religious life in Judea. He proposed drastic measures for dissolving marriages contracted with heathen women. When he attempted to erect some kind of defensive wall around Jerusalem his enemies both inside and outside the city allied against him and he returned to Persia in 457 b.c., doubtless to report to the central authority. The prophecy of Malachi, dated about 450 b.c., (see Malachi), shows the conditions of contemporary society in Jerusalem. The people were dispirited by the apparent failure of God to meet even the most pressing needs of His people (cf. Zech 8:4-13), and many were openly skeptical about the value of a life lived in obedience to God. With clear contempt for the traditions of the Torah many irreligious Jews were committing adultery, indulging in perjury, and oppressing the poor (Mal 3:5). The priests also had become lax in their duties, manifesting boredom with their religious functions (1:13) and treating sacrificial regulations so lightly that they offered inferior animals in the service of God (1:7, 8). Because the prophetic word was no longer taken seriously, Malachi found that he had to argue his case in a manner unknown to earlier prophets. Drastic action was clearly necessary to remedy the deterioration, and it fell to Nehemiah, who was appointed civil governor of Judea in 445 b.c., to furnish the leadership which restored the confidence of the community in the divine purpose, and made feasible the religious reforms of Ezra.