In the first year of his reign, Cyrus king of Persia did something no conqueror had ever done: he freed an enslaved nation and paid to rebuild their God's house. Josephus explains why. Cyrus had read the scroll of the prophet Isaiah—written a hundred and forty years before the Temple was even destroyed—and found his own name in it (Isaiah 44:28-45:1). God had called Cyrus by name and appointed him to restore Jerusalem.
When Cyrus read this prophecy about himself, "an earnest desire and ambition seized upon him to fulfill what was so written." He summoned the most prominent Jews in Babylon and told them they were free to go home. He would fund the reconstruction personally. He wrote to the governors of Syria ordering them to contribute gold, silver, and livestock. He returned the sacred vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had looted from the Temple—fifty gold chargers, five hundred silver ones, forty gold cups, a thousand other large vessels. The inventory was staggering.
The leaders of Judah and Benjamin, along with the Levites and priests, left immediately. But many Jews stayed behind in Babylon, unwilling to leave the possessions they had accumulated during seventy years of exile. The returnees numbered 42,462, plus 7,337 servants and 245 musicians—a fraction of those who had been carried away.
Back in Jerusalem, they laid the Temple foundation with trumpets and hymns. But something unexpected happened. The old men who remembered Solomon's Temple wept. This modest rebuilding could not compare to the original glory. Their crying was so loud it drowned out the trumpets and the celebration. The young rejoiced; the old grieved. Both responses were genuine—the miracle of return could not erase the memory of what had been lost.