avenger of blood:
the nearest relative of a murdered individual:.Numbers
35:6-28. It was his right and duty to slay the murderer.(2Samuel
14:7,11).if
he found him outside of one of the cities
of refuge that he may have gone to.
-Chaldean/Chaldea:
Chaldea was an ancient region of southern Mesopotamia.(map).settled
B.C.E.
1000, it reached the height of its power under Nebuchadnezzar II:.Daniel
2:1.
Babylon
was within the Chaldean area and the terms are often used synonymously.
The Chaldean empire and Babylon
were destroyed by Persians
in B.C.E. 539. Belshazzar,
the last king, reigned B.C.E.
550-539.
Chaldea was the language
of commerce and of social intercourse in Western Asia and after the exile
of the Israelites
from Egypt, gradually came to be the popular language of Palestine,
more properly called Judea.(map).
It is called 'Syrian' in.2Kings
18:26. Some isolated words in this language are preserved in the New
Testament. These are specimens of the vernacular
language of Palestine/Judah at that period. The term Hebrew
was also sometimes applied to the Chaldee because it had become the language
of the Hebrews:.John
5:2; 19:20.
Easton's
Bible Dictionary: Chaldea is employed by the sacred writers in
certain portions of the Old Testament:.Daniel
2:4-28. It is the Aramaic.dialect,
as it is sometimes called, as distinguished
from the Hebrew
dialect.
The Chaldeans were known
for their philosophies
and were soothsayers. They studied
mathematics and astrology,
by which they pretended
to foretell
the destiny
of men born under certain.constellations.
-cities
of refuge: were appointed for certain
types of murder, such as would be manslaughter,
where such people could live out their lives ostracized
from normal society:.Numbers
35:11 "Then you shall appoint cities as cities
of refuge, that the slayer may flee thither, which has killed any individual
unawares.(inadvertently).
And they shall be unto you cities for refuge from the avenger; that the
manslayer die not, until he stand before the congregation in judgment."
Numbers
35:15-34. There were six
cities of refuge back then.
In order that this law might
be guarded against abuse, Moses
appointed six cities of
refuge:.Exodus
21:13.
These were in different parts
of the country and every facility was afforded the manslayer that he might
flee to the city that lay nearest him for safety. Into the city of refuge
the avenger durst
not follow him. This arrangement applied only to cases where the death
was not premeditated.
The case had to be investigated by the authorities of the city and the
wilfulmurderer
was on no account to be spared. He was regarded as an impure and polluted
individual and was delivered up to the gaol.(jail):.Deuteronony
19:11-13.
If the offence was manslaughter,
then the fugitive must remain within the city of refuge till the death
of the high priest:.Numbers
35:25.
-commandments/command:.John
15:10 "If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love, even
as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love." John
15:14 "You are my friends, if you do whatsoever I command you."
A command is an instruction.
In Strong's
Concordance the original bases to its Greek reference numbers
go from 1785 to 1781 to 1722 and 5056 for this word 'commandments'. These
numbers together point to 'the contents of the command', which is an instruction,
a command because it's from the heart of the Creator.
1722 is 'a
primary preposition denoting a fixed position in place, time or state'.
5056 is the
'end' or the 'be
all end all' or, 'this is what it's all about', this is the 'uttermost';
that is, these commandments
are everything that the Creator is. They sum up the Creator and what His
heart is and what He can do when we are open
to Him.
Emmanuel
referred to them as the two
great commandments.
-concision:
the word means a cutting off, such as would occur in a
circumcision and referring in Philippians
3:2 to such Old
Testament practices, now done away as far as the Infinite One is concerned,
but still practiced by those who allowed themselves to get or stay with
religion, such as the ancient Pharisees,
etc.
In Philippians 3:2 Paul was
warning them to avoid getting entangled in all the old stuff, stuff that
was now no longer applicable.
Paul also talks of this in
Galatians
5:1-3.
-Cyrus
the Great:.B.C.E.
599-529, reigned 559-529 and was contemporary with Nebuchadnezzar-II.
In the Hebrew
language he was called 'Koresh'.
Cyrus II was the celebrated 'King of Persia'.(Persia
also called Elam),
a very powerful king who was conqueror of Babylon
and who issued the decree of liberation to the Jews:.Ezra
1:1,2. He had a son in B.C.E.
599, Cambyses-II, who became the
prince of Persia. In the year B.C.E. 559 he became king of Persia.(map).with
the kingdom of Media being
partly added to Persia by conquest.
Cyrus I, also called Astyages,
was an Achaemenian king and
grandfather of Cyrus II the Great. He has a son named Cambyses I. According
to the 5th century B.C.E. Greek historian Herodotus,
Cambyses I married a daughter of Astyages, his sister, by whom he became
the father of Cyrus II the Great.
Persians regarded the Medes.(aka
Medians).as
equals as their countries were adjacent
to each other. Media had risen to a place of great power, vastly extending
its boundaries.
Media was in southwest Asia
in present-day northwest Iran. It became part of the Assyrian
Empire and was conquered
in B.C.E. 550 by Cyrus II, called Cyrus the Great, who added it to the
Persian Empire. But it did not long exist as an independent kingdom. It
rose with Cyaxares, its first king and
it passed away with him, for during the reign of his son and successor
Astyages, the Persians waged war against the Medes and conquered them,
the two nations, in B.C.E. 558, now united under one monarch,
Cyrus II succeeded to the
thrones of Media and Persia and completed the union between those countries
in B.C.E. 536, which appear to have been in reality but two nations of
the same race,
having the same religion and using languages similar
to each other and to the ancient Sanskrit.
Previously to their union
under Cyrus, Daniel speaks of the law of the Medes and Persians as being
the same:.Daniel
6:8.
Cyrus II was a great military
leader. Babylon fell before his army in B.C.E. 538 on the night of Belshazzar's
feast.(Daniel
5th chapter).and
then the ancient dominion of Assyria
was also added to his empire. Hitherto the great kings of the Earth had
oppressed the ancient tribes of Israel. He apparently knew some things
of the religion of one of the tribe, the Jews. The Creator employed him
in doing service to God's ancient people. He may possibly have gained,
through contact with the Jews, some knowledge of their religion. Cyrus
was to the people as a 'shepherd':.Isaiah
44:28; 45:1.
The 'first year of Cyrus'.(Ezra
1:1,2).is
not the year of his elevation to power over the Medes, nor over the Persians,
nor the year of the fall of Babylon, but the year succeeding the two years
during which 'Darius the Mede' was
viceroy
in Babylon after its fall. At this time and only in B.C.E. 536, Cyrus became
actual king over Palestine,
which became a part of his Babylonian empire.
The edict
of Cyrus for the rebuilding of Jerusalem marked a great epoch
in the history of the Israelitish people. A chronicle
drawn up just after the conquest of Babylonia by Cyrus II, gives the history
of the reign of the last king of Babylon and of the fall of the Babylonian
empire.
In B.C.E. 538 there was a
revolt in southern Babylonia, while the army of Cyrus II entered the country
from the north. In June the Babylonian army was completely defeated at
Opis and immediately afterwards Babylonia opened its gates to the conqueror.
Gobryas a.k.a. Ugbaru was
at this time, governor of Kurdistan.
In October, Cyrus II himself
arrived and proclaimed a general amnesty,
which was communicated by Gobryas to 'all the province of Babylon' of which
Ugbaru had been made governor.
Cyrus II now assumed the
title of 'king of Babylon' and made rich offerings to the temples. At the
same time he allowed the foreign populations who had been deported
to Babylonia to return to their old homes, carrying with them the images
of their Gods. Among these populations were the Jews, who, as they had
no images, took with them the sacred vessels of the temple. The Jews, having
been in captivity in Babylon.(2Chronicles
36:10), came
out under Cyrus II.
After the taking of Babylon,
Cyrus
II, who was now master of all Asia from India to the Dardanelles.(a
strait
connecting the Aegean Sea with the Sea of Marmara {map}),
placed Darius, a Median prince, on the
throne, during the two years of whose reign Daniel
held the office of first of the 'three presidents' of the empire and was
thus practically at the head of affairs, no doubt interesting himself in
the prospects of the captive Jews whom he had at last the happiness of
seeing themselves restored to their own land, although Daniel did not return
with them, but remained in Babylon.
In the seventh century A.D.
Persia fell under the power of the Saracens, in the thirteenth century
it was conquered by Genghis Khan and in the fourteenth by Tamerlane.
Modern Persia is bounded
north by Georgia, the Caspian Sea
and Tartary; east by Afghanistan and Beloochistan; south by Ormus and west
by the dominions of Turkey. Its inhabitants retain to a remarkable extent
the manners and custom of ancient Persia, of which we have so vivid a picture
in the Bible books of Esther,
Ezra,
Nehemiah
and Daniel. In the 1971,
Iran celebrated the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the monarchy
by Cyrus.