Iran and the End of Days       

The histories of Babylonia and Persia (modern-day Iraq and Iran) may be traced to postdiluvian civilization. Noach’s sons, Shem, Cham, and Yafes, were bequeathed distinct Divine missions after the Flood. While some of Cham’s descendants were cursed to be slaves, Yafes’s descendants were assigned a twofold objective — to be custodians of the physical world, ruling as monarchs and developing aesthetics; and to act as the facilitators and catalysts for the spiritual ascendancy of Shem’s progeny. Shem’s descendants, meanwhile, were charged with being the world’s spiritual and moral beacons.

Ancient civilization lived in relative harmony until Nimrod, Cham’s grandson, unilaterally crowned himself monarch, an act of brazen usurpation. Nimrod appropriated Yafes’s role and established an empire in Babylonia. According to Rashi, Seforno, Rokeach, and others, Shem’s grandson Ashur protested this illegitimate seizure of power, and left Mesopotamia.

Millennia later, Nimrod’s eventual successor in Babylonia was none other than Nevuchadnetzar II, who destroyed the first Beis Hamikdash. Almost two hundred years before the destruction of the First Temple, Yeshayahu Hanavi prophesied that a descendant of Yafes, a Persian king named Koresh, would supplant Babylonia as the major world power, restoring Yafes’s natural rights to the world monarchy. Yeshayahu further astoundingly prophesied that Hashem would commission this Koresh, a non-Jewish king, to redeem the Jewish People and rebuild the Beis Hamikdash. Yeshayahu’s words proved accurate — Babylonia was destroyed, Koresh ruled the known world, and the Jews were redeemed from exile.

There was one critical problem: Only 42,360 Jews returned to Israel. The rest stayed in exile. Koresh did not do enough to facilitate the Jewish redemption, nor did he completely rebuild the Temple. Fearing the Jews might rebel, Koresh ordered that sections of the Temple be constructed of wood so the Temple could easily be burned to cinders. Alas, Noach’s blessing and charge to Yafes would not be fulfilled through Koresh the Persian. Instead, Yafes’s illustrious legacy would be assigned to his other offspring, Greece, and eventually, Greece’s successor and Persia’s archnemesis: Rome.