The Neo-Babylonian Empire fell to Cyrus II (c.46; r.559-530 BC) almost without a fight. On 29 October 539 BC he entered Babylon and had himself hailed as liberator.
Cyrus decreed that peoples exiled by the Babylonians could return to their homelands and build new lives by reviving their native customs and religions. Two leaders in the Jewish return and restoration, Sheshbazzar seems to have been a descendent of the pre-exilic royal family. Not all of the exiles chose to return. The relative freedom they experienced during their years in Babylonia had allowed them to settle and in some cases become prosperous. Judah, on the other hand, was still marked by devastation and poverty.
In the Persian satrapal system, Judah was included in a satrapy called ‘West-of-Euphrates’, extending from the Euphrates westward to the Mediterranean Sea. Its headquarters were in Samaria. Although the Samaritans continued to claim a place among God’s people, leaders of the community of Jews (derived from ‘Judah’) who returned to Judah after the Exile did not consider the Samaritans to be truly Jewish because they had intermarried with foreign peoples.
It may be that the next two prominent Jewish leaders in the biblical record, Zerubbabel and Jeshua, came to Judah during the reign of Cambyses II (r.530-522 BC), but the Bible describes their activities within the context of the reign of Darius-I (c.64; r.522-486 BC). Under the leadership of Zerubbabel (a civic leader) and Jeshua (a priest), the Second Temple was completed and dedicated in 515 BC.
In his twentieth year Artaxerxes-I (r.465-424 BC) appointed Nehemiah as governor of Judah. In his first term he oversaw the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem, re-establishing the city as a separate political entity. Later, possibly in his second term, he may have taken the additional measure of purging the Jerusalem Temple of foreign priests.
Ezra, like Nehemiah, was a highly placed Persian official. He saw the process of rebuilding of Jerusalem being put into question by the intermarriage of exile men with ‘foreign women’. In response he got all men to divorce their foreign wives and then expel them and their children. This ‘purification’ of Judah is the prelude to his reading of the ‘Law of Moses’ (the Torah) before all of Judah, and the people and priests entering into a covenant to keep the ‘Law’ and separating themselves from all other peoples.
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