In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken through Jeremiah, the LORD stirred the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia to send a proclamation throughout his kingdom and to put it in writing as follows: "This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: 'The LORD, the God of heaven, who has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, has appointed me to build a house for Him at Jerusalem in Judah. Whoever among you belongs to His people, may his God be with him, and may he go to Jerusalem in Judah and build the house of the LORD, the God of Israel; He is the God who is in Jerusalem.
In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken through Jeremiah, the LORD stirred the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia to send a proclamation throughout his kingdom and to put it in writing as follows: "This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: 'The LORD, the God of heaven, who has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, has appointed me to build a house for Him at Jerusalem in Judah. Whoever among you belongs to His people, may the LORD his God be with him, and may he go up.'"
Significance
Ezra 1:1-3 reproduces nearly verbatim the text of 2 Chronicles 36:22-23, both recording Cyrus's proclamation: "The LORD, the God of heaven, who has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, has appointed me to build a house for Him at Jerusalem" (יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵי הַשָּׁמַיִם). This deliberate textual overlap serves as a literary seam linking Chronicles to Ezra, with 2 Chronicles ending mid-thought and Ezra completing it. The shared vocabulary signals that Ezra is the canonical continuation of Chronicles, and both frame the return from exile as the fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy, emphasizing that YHWH "stirred the spirit" (הֵעִיר אֶת־רוּחַ) of a pagan king to accomplish His covenant purposes.
