Isaiah 45:1: “Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut;”
I found this passage to be very interesting. God calls Cyrus His anointed. It is believed by evangelical scholars and I agree with them that Isaiah made this prophecy more than 150 years before Cyrus was born. It would be like as if D.L. Moody predicted in the late 1800’s that Donald Trump would be elected President of the United States actually giving his name. As such a thing is so preposterous to the liberal minded you will learn in your more liberal seminaries that there were really two Isaiahs who wrote the book known as the Deutero Isaiah hypothesis. In other words someone came along 150 years after Isaiah and wrote the conclusion to the Book of Isaiah. This explains how Cyrus could be named before he was born as it places the text after the event and not before. In fact as you dive deeper into the liberal mindset you find up to six Isaiahs. I recall a missionary saying that before he was allowed to enter a country as a missionary the dominate church in that country gave him a questionnaire where he was asked how many Isaiahs wrote the book of Isaiah. He was given the choice starting with 2 Isaiahs on up. He was not even allowed to choose just one Isaiah. Oh how people hate to admit to something miraculous.
However, I recall reading in the works of Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews in 11:1-2 that Daniel actually showed the Isaiah prophecy to Cyrus to encourage him to make a decree in support of the Jews. I know if this were in a Hollywood movie it would show Daniel walking out of the doors of the Babylonian palace with Babylon in fiery ruins handing Cyrus the scrolls as he march triumphantly into Babylon and Daniel telling Cyrus: “We knew for 150 years that you would show up at our doorstep.” But that of course is history not as it was but as we would like it to be. Most likely Daniel waited until Cyrus was preparing to make a major decision as to what to do with the Jews that Daniel presented him with the ancient scrolls naming him as the protector of Israel as well as the other things he would do.
Cyrus was an unusual king. For one thing the people of Babylon welcomed his coming as a deliverer from the tyrant king of Babylon. In fact in the British Museum of London in Room 51 there is an artifact labeled as the Cyrus Cylinder with a declaration in the Akkadian cuneiform script written in the name of Cyrus the Great shortly after the conquest of Babylon which praises Cyrus for deposing the king of Babylon Nabonidus. Babylonian history gets a little murky with the confusion of Nebuchadnezzar. It would seem that Nabonidus was the king of Babylon during the Persian siege and Belshazzar was his son who ruled while his father was off on a seven year archaeological dig. Nonetheless the Cyrus Cylinder declared that Nabonidus was such a tyrant that the people of Babylon welcomed Cyrus and opened the gates for him.
Cyrus gave strict commands that his army was not to plunder or harm the city in anyway. Cyrus was a builder and not a destroyer. He would go into the very slums of the cities and rebuild them. Sort of the Donald Trump of his day. He would respect the religions of the nations that he conquered and the first order of business was to rebuild their temples as he did with the Jewish temple. He built his power base off the working class people so to speak and literally enraged the elite ruling class. He was a hero to the downtrodden. Hence Persians kings were quite popular with the populous. They would even choose their queens from the peasant or working class people as with Esther. Their queens were noted for their beauty and not the royal elite status. Cyrus was one of the first kings in ancient times to make a human rights declaration. Yet, Cyrus was not a believer in God Jehovah. He was a follower of Zoroastrianism proclaimed by the monotheistic prophet Zoroaster. Zoroastrianism like the Hebrew religion was monotheistic believing in the deity Ahura Mazda, god of wisdom who was the supreme being. They taught a form of messianism, heaven, hell and free will. This close kinship to Hebrew religion may have formed the basis of the favoritism shown the Jews.
Nonetheless this pseudo form of Jehovahism so to speak probably caused the prophecies of Isaiah to impact Cyrus almost as much as the knowledge that they were written 150 years earlier actually naming him by his real name.
Here is what I find very interesting is that God called him His anointed. For one thing, kings in Persia were not anointed, in fact that was strictly a Hebrew thing to anoint a king. The word used in Isaiah for anointed is mashiach where we get the word Messiah. God actually called Cyrus His messiah. It comes from the root word mashach which means to be consecrated or set apart by divine command for a specific purpose. What is very interesting about this is that a person does not have to be a believer to be a mashach. God will call anyone to be His tool or instrument. Your boss may be a mashach anointed or set apart to give you a freedom to share the Gospel at work. Your mate may be a mashach anointed or set apart to aid you in your service to God. The Jewish people look for the coming of a Mashach although there is very differing opinions as to who or what the Mashach will be. Will it be a person, a governmental leader, a military leader, or is it just a certain period of time?
Jesus, of course, was a Mashach, one sent to earth for a specific purpose anointed by God for that purpose and He just happened to be the Son of God. In a couple weeks we are going to the polls to elect a new leader of this country. Many Christians are very unhappy with our choices. Yet, at this crucial time in our nation’s history and the history of Israel itself, I am just fool enough to believe that one of these candidates just might be a mashach, an anointed one for a specific purpose to carry out the will of God. Rather than sit back and despair that neither candidate conforms to your Christian values, consider Cyrus, he was not a believer, yet God anointed him. Pray for the anointing of the candidate who will be chosen to lead this country. The fault will lie with us and our failure to pray and not with whomever we choose as our leader.
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