How would you characterize the forced migration policy of Cyrus? How does it make sense as colonial policy? Does it relate to his supposed Zoroastrian belief system? If so how? Who are the scholars who weigh in on this issue? What do these reconstructions do to a theological reflection of these texts today?
James Bond orders his martini shaken not stirred. Genius however, is both shaken and stirred. Ezra 1:1-5 describes the context for the edict of Cyrus. The verb that caught my eye this reading was “stirred.” It is in the hiphil stem, the causative. What is a causative? Well think of Star Trek the Next Generation. When Captain Picard says to Commander Riker “make it so” his speech embodies the causative. Picard is not doing the action rather he is causing the action to take place.
There is an interesting parallel Cyrus King of Persia and some of the exiles were both stirred. The parallelism points to the way that persons inside and outside the community of faith each in their own way might be stirred by God.