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.
And this whole land will become a desolate wasteland, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years.
Significance
Ezra 1:1 explicitly states that Cyrus's decree occurred "to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken through Jeremiah" (לִכְלוֹת דְּבַר־יְהוָה מִפִּי יִרְמְיָה, likhlot devar-YHWH mippi Yirmeyah), directly citing Jeremiah's seventy-year prophecy as the prophetic basis for the return from exile. Jeremiah 25:11 predicted seventy years of Babylonian service, and Ezra records the fulfillment when Cyrus permits the Jews to return and rebuild the temple. The narrative connection demonstrates that the Persian king's decree was not a political accident but the providential fulfillment of prophetic word — God "stirred the spirit of Cyrus" to accomplish what Jeremiah had foretold. This is one of the clearest instances of OT promise-fulfillment within the OT itself. Jeremiah's own phrase for the appointed term—שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה (shiv'im shanah, "seventy years")—underscores that Ezra's narrator counts the exile as having run its full prophesied length.
