Cyrus (Emperor living at the time of Exile and Return)

The Persian king Isaiah names by name roughly a century and a half before he was born: 'my shepherd' (Isaiah 44:28), who then actually issues the decree letting the exiles go home and rebuild the temple. Josephus preserves what he presents as the decree's own wording, the same funding order behind Zerubbabel's return.

Cyrus the Great was the Persian king who conquered Babylon and, in a sharp break from earlier imperial policy, allowed the exiled peoples Babylon had deported, including the Jews, to return home and rebuild their temples. Isaiah names Cyrus by name generations before his birth and calls him God's anointed, a shepherd who would carry out God's purposes without even knowing the God he served. The Cyrus Cylinder, a clay artifact discovered in Babylon in 1879, independently records Cyrus's policy of returning exiled peoples and restoring their temples, closely matching the biblical account in Ezra.