The most important lesson to come out of these opening verses is the sheer faithfulness of God in keeping his promises. We have seen that, years earlier in the predictive prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah, God had promised to bring his people back to their homeland, and that the temple would be rebuilt. All that was now about to be fulfilled in the proclamation of Cyrus. During the long night of exile God’s people must have wondered at times if they would ever see Jerusalem again.