Jerusalem: The Biography

Within three years, Darius had defeated all challenges and emerged as one of the most accomplished rulers of the ancient world, establishing a tolerant world empire that stretched from Thrace and Egypt to the Hindu Kush – the first to extend across three continents.^* The new Great King turned out to be a rare combination of conqueror and administrator. From his image carved in rock to commemorate his victory, we know that this Darius – Darayavaush – presented himself as a classic Aryan with high brow and straight nose, shown as 5 feet 10 inches tall, wearing a war crown of gold studded with oval jewels, his fringe frizzed, his drooping moustache twirled, his hair tied in a bun and his square beard arranged in four rows of curls alternating with straight strands. In his majesty, he wore a long robe over trousers and shoes, and carried a duck-headed bow.

This was the awesome ruler to whom Zerubbabel appealed, citing the decree of Cyrus. Darius ordered a check of the imperial rolls and found the decree, commanding, ‘Let the governor of the Jews build this house of God. I, Darius, have a decree. Let it be done with speed.’ In 518, he marched westwards to restore order in Egypt, probably passing through Judaea to settle the over-excited Jews of Jerusalem: he may have executed Zerubbabel, who now disappeared without explanation – the last of the Davidians.

In March 515, the Second Temple was dedicated joyfully by the priests with the sacrifice of 100 bullocks, 200 rams, 400 lambs and twelve goats (to expiate the sins of the Twelve Tribes). The Judaeans thus celebrated the first Passover since the Exile. But when the old men who remembered Solomon’s Temple saw this modest building, they burst into tears. The city remained tiny and deserted.²³

Over fifty years later, the cup-bearer of Darius’ grandson, King Artaxerxes I, was a Jew named Nehemiah. The Jerusalemites appealed to him for help: ‘The remnant are in great affliction. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down.’ Nehemiah was heartbroken: ‘I sat down and wept and mourned.’ When he was next serving at court in Susa, the Persian capital, King Artaxerxes asked, ‘Why is thy countenance sad?’ ‘Let the king live for ever,’ replied this Jewish courtier, ‘why should not my countenance be sad, when the city, the place of my father’s sepulchres, lieth waste? … If it please the king … send me unto Judah … that I may build it.’ Nehemiah was ‘sore afraid’ as he awaited the answer.

NEHEMIAH: THE DECLINE OF THE PERSIANS

The Great King appointed Nehemiah governor and granted him funds and a military escort. But the Samaritans, north of Jerusalem, were ruled by their own hereditary governor, Sanballat, who distrusted this secretive courtier from faraway Susa and the schemes of the returning Exiles. By night Nehemiah, who feared assassination, inspected Jerusalem’s broken walls and burned gates. His memoir, the only political autobiography in the Bible, tells how Sanballat ‘laughed us to scorn’ when he heard the plans to rebuild the walls until Nehemiah revealed his appointment as governor. Landowners and priests were each given sections of the wall to rebuild. When they were attacked by Sanballat’s ruffians, Nehemiah set guards ‘so the wall was finished in fifty and two days’, enclosing just the City of David and the Temple Mount, with a small fortress north of the Temple.

Now Jerusalem ‘was large and great’, Nehemiah said, but ‘the people were few therein’. Nehemiah persuaded the Jews outside the city to draw lots: one out of every ten would settle in Jerusalem. After twelve years Nehemiah travelled to Persia to report to the king, but when he returned to Jerusalem he found that Sanballat’s cronies were lucratively running the Temple while the Jews were marrying with the locals. Nehemiah expelled these interlopers, discouraged intermarriage and imposed his new pure Judaism.

As the Persian kings lost control over their provinces, the Jews developed their own semi-independent statelet of Yehud. Based around the Temple, and funded by growing numbers of pilgrims, Yehud was ruled by the Torah and governed by a dynasty of high priests supposedly descended from King David’s priest Zadok. Once again, the Temple treasury became a coveted prize. One of the high priests was murdered inside the Temple by his own avaricious brother, Jesus (the Aramaic for Joshua), a sacrilege that gave the Persian governor the pretext to march on Jerusalem and loot its gold.²⁴

While the Persian courtiers were distracted by their own homicidal intrigues, King Philip II of Macedon trained a formidable army, conquered the Greek city-states and prepared to launch a sacred war against Persia to avenge the invasions of Darius and his son Xerxes. When Philip was assassinated, his twenty-year-old son Alexander seized the throne and launched the attack on Persia that would bring Greece to Jerusalem.

THE MACEDONIANS

336–166 BC