Cyrus the Great (as Messiah)
Cyrus the Great (c. 600–530 BCE), founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, is the only non-Jewish figure explicitly called 'messiah' (mashiach, anointed one) in the Hebrew Bible (Isaiah 45:1), because he conquered Babylon in 538 BCE and issued the Cyrus Cylinder, permitting exiled peoples including the Jews to return home and rebuild their temples, ending the Babylonian captivity and enabling the transformation from Israelite to Jewish identity.
The Babylonian exile began in 597 BCE when Nebuchadnezzar II deported Judah's ruling class, the priests, court officials, craftsmen, the literate elite, to Babylon. In 538 BCE, Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon and immediately issued the Cyrus Cylinder, announcing his policy of permitting all displaced peoples to return home. For the Jewish exiles, this was experienced as miraculous: Yahweh had raised up a foreign king to fulfill the covenant promise and return his people to the land. The prophet Deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah chapters 40–55, written during the exile) called Cyrus Yahweh's 'shepherd' and 'anointed one', the messiah who would accomplish Yahweh's will.
The theological implications were significant. If a pagan Persian king could be Yahweh's messiah, then Yahweh's power was genuinely universal, not limited to the land of Israel or to those who worshipped him by birth. This universalizing monotheism (Yahweh is the only true god, and all rulers including Cyrus serve his purposes whether they know it or not) was the Babylonian exile's most consequential theological innovation. The pre-exile Israelite religion was relatively open, polytheistic in practice, and locally focused. The exile produced a sharper, more exclusive, more portable identity.
Cyrus's practical politics aligned perfectly with religious necessity. The Persian Empire maintained stability through local religious tolerance and sponsorship, appointing local religious elites as administrators, funding temple reconstruction, and creating loyal local networks. Ezra the Scribe returned from Persia with explicit royal authorization to impose Torah law on the returnees. The restoration of Jewish religious identity under Persian patronage was simultaneously genuine religious revival and Persian administrative policy, a convergence that continues to shape scholarly debate about the 'authenticity' of post-exilic Judaism.
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Why is Cyrus the Great called the messiah in the Bible? ＋
In Isaiah 45:1, Deutero-Isaiah calls Cyrus the Great Yahweh's 'anointed one' (messiah) because his 538 BCE conquest of Babylon led to the Cyrus Cylinder, permitting Jews to return to Judah and rebuild the Jerusalem temple. The exiles experienced Cyrus as Yahweh's instrument fulfilling the covenant promise, making him functionally the messiah of the Babylonian exile, the only non-Jew to receive this title in the Hebrew Bible.