Cyrus

Cyrus II (meaning in Old Persian the sun or the shepherd; Hebrew renders it as Ko'resh) was the founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire and the conqueror of Babylon in 539 B.C. His capture of Babylon — described in Daniel 5:30–31 and corroborated by the Cyrus Cylinder discovered in 1879 — ended the Neo-Babylonian Empire and transferred sovereignty over the ancient Near East to Persia. In his first year, Cyrus issued a decree permitting the Jewish exiles to return to their land and rebuild the temple (Ezra 1:1–4; 2 Chronicles 36:22–23), a policy of religious tolerance consistent with what the Cyrus Cylinder reveals of his general approach to conquered peoples' religions.

Most remarkably, Isaiah 44:28 and 45:1 name Cyrus by name as the one whom the LORD would call as his shepherd to perform his pleasure and rebuild Jerusalem — prophecies written approximately 150 years before Cyrus's birth. Isaiah 45:1 addresses Cyrus as the LORD's anointed (mashiach), applying to a foreign king the category normally reserved for Israel's kings and priests, because God would use him to accomplish his redemptive purposes for his people. The Ezra narrative presents Cyrus's decree as the direct fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy of a seventy-year exile (Jeremiah 25:11; 29:10).