Chapter 1 The sovereign God superintending history Bible reading The book of Ezra: An overview It is good to be reminded of the historicity of the Bible, that it is not just fable or folklore. With this thought in mind consider the following series of events which enable us to see the hand of God in history. In 586 BC Jerusalem fell and the captivity of Judah seemed complete. This marked the third and final deportation to Babylon. But in 539 BC Cyrus, leader of the Persian Empire, conquered Babylon.