Artaxerxes

Scripture: Ezra 7:1-28; Nehemiah 1:1-2:20; 13:6; Daniel 9:24-27; Malachi 1:1

Artaxerxes I Longimanus (אַרְתַּחְשַׁשְׂתָּא, Artachshasta in Aramaic; the name appears 16 times across Ezra and Nehemiah) ruled the Persian empire from 465 to 424 BC, having succeeded his father Xerxes I following Xerxes's assassination. He reigned for 41 years, the longest reign of any Achaemenid king after Darius I. The historical record is well attested: the Elephantine papyri, discovered in Egypt and dated to his reign, name him; Thucydides records his accession in Book 1.104; Ctesias and Diodorus Siculus write of his reign in detail. Within the biblical narrative, he is the king who authorized two of the three waves of return from Babylonian exile: Ezra's return in his seventh year (c. 458 BC) and Nehemiah's return in his twentieth year (c. 445/444 BC).

Ezra 7, The Commission: "For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of YHWH, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel" (Ezra 7:10). In the seventh year of Artaxerxes, Ezra led a group of returning exiles from Babylon to Jerusalem. The royal letter Artaxerxes issued, recorded in Aramaic within the text of Ezra, preserving the administrative language of the Persian chancellery, is one of the most extraordinary documents in the OT. Artaxerxes gave Ezra authority to appoint magistrates and judges over "all the people in the province Beyond the River" (7:25), to teach the laws of YHWH, and to impose judgment including death, banishment, confiscation of goods, or imprisonment (7:26). He ordered his provincial treasurers to provide whatever Ezra required in silver, wheat, wine, oil, and salt, "without prescribing how much" (7:22). His stated reason: "Whatever is decreed by the God of heaven, let it be done in full for the house of the God of heaven, lest his wrath be against the realm of the king and his sons" (7:23). The Persian king's explicit deference to YHWH reflects standard Achaemenid policy toward subject peoples' gods, Cyrus's Cylinder records similar deference to Marduk and other gods, but within the biblical narrative it is read as YHWH directing the heart of the Persian emperor for his redemptive purposes. Ezra 7:27-28, in a pivot from Aramaic back to Hebrew, records Ezra's own response: "Blessed be YHWH, the God of our fathers, who put such a thing as this into the heart of the king, to beautify the house of YHWH that is in Jerusalem, and who extended to me his steadfast love before the king and his counselors, and before all the king's mighty officers. I took courage, for the hand of YHWH my God was on me." The phrase "the hand of YHWH my God was on me", variations of "the good hand of my God", appears repeatedly in Ezra (7:9; 7:28; 8:18; 8:22; 8:31) and once in Nehemiah (2:8). It is the returning community's persistent testimony that the Persian administration, with all its power, was moving under YHWH's direction.

Nehemiah 2, The Cup-Bearer's Request: "In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king" (Nehemiah 2:1). The story begins four months earlier: in the month of Chislev, Nehemiah had received a report that "the remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire" (1:3). Nehemiah wept, mourned, fasted, and prayed for days (1:4). His prayer in Nehemiah 1:5-11 is one of the great intercessory prayers of the OT, citing YHWH's covenant with Moses, confessing collective sin, and claiming the promise of return from Deuteronomy 30:1-5. When Nehemiah carried wine to Artaxerxes in the month of Nisan, the king noticed his face: "Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart" (2:2). To appear sad before the Persian king was dangerous, an implicit expression of displeasure with the king's world, or an ill omen. Nehemiah says he was "very much afraid" (2:2). But before answering, he prayed silently (2:4: "So I prayed to the God of heaven") and then asked permission to go to Jerusalem to rebuild it. Artaxerxes asked how long the journey would take and when he would return, a question Nehemiah answered and which Artaxerxes accepted. He granted letters to the governors of the Trans-Euphrates for safe passage, and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king's forest for timber for the gates, for the wall, and for Nehemiah's own house. Nehemiah 2:8 records the result: "And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was on me." Artaxerxes also sent army officers and cavalry with Nehemiah (2:9). The opposition of Sanballat and Tobiah, who "were greatly displeased that someone had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel" (2:10), could not override a commission from the Persian throne.

Daniel 9 and the Seventy Weeks, The Prophetic Calculation: Daniel 9:25: "Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time." The 69 weeks (7+62) of years equal 483 years under the "week of years" (shavua, שָׁבוּעַ, a unit of seven) reading established by Daniel 9:24's reference to seventy sevens (shiv'im shavuim, שִׁבְעִים שָׁבֻעִים). The "decree to restore and build Jerusalem" has been identified with four possible candidates: Cyrus's decree in Ezra 1:1-4 (c. 538 BC), Darius's reconfirmation in Ezra 6:1-12 (c. 520 BC), Artaxerxes's letter to Ezra in Ezra 7 (c. 458 BC), and Artaxerxes's commission to Nehemiah in Nehemiah 2 (c. 445/444 BC). Sir Robert Anderson's calculation in The Coming Prince (1894) used the Nehemiah 2 commission, the 1st Nisan of Artaxerxes's twentieth year, as the starting point, employed 360-day prophetic years, and arrived at the date of Christ's Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, which he identified with Luke 19:38. Anderson's specific arithmetic has been challenged on calendar grounds; the broader framework, that Artaxerxes's decree to Nehemiah is the chronological anchor of Daniel 9:25, has been the majority position in premillennial and dispensational scholarship and continues to be argued by serious interpreters. Whatever the precise calculation, the commission Artaxerxes gave Nehemiah in the month of Nisan of his twentieth year is historically the most plausible referent for a decree to "restore and build Jerusalem" that included the city walls and would have been publicly recognizable as such. The 69 weeks of Daniel 9 are not separable from the Persian king who authorized the return that started them.

Artaxerxes is present in the Sanctum as the Persian emperor through whom YHWH orchestrated the full legal and civic restoration of Jerusalem: Ezra carrying the Torah's authority, Nehemiah carrying the permission to rebuild. He did not worship YHWH, but his decrees carried YHWH's purposes. The Sanctum holds him as a study in how sovereign Providence operates through rulers who do not know they are instruments, and whose decrees set prophetic clocks running.