Ezra 6:2

And there was found at Achmetha,.... Which Jarchi and Aben Ezra take to be the name of a vessel in which letters and writings were put for safety; but it was no doubt the name of a place; the Vulgate

And there was found at Achmetha, in the palace that is in the province of the Medes, a roll, and therein was a record thus written: There was found at Achmetha , [ bª-'Achmaªtaa' (H307).

Here the king’ s answer may seem to begin, and this following account he sends to them, and after that lays down his commands. Achmetha; the royal city of the Medes and Persians.

Ezra 6:2 And there was found at Achmetha, in the palace that [is] in the province of the Medes, a roll, and therein [was] a record thus written:Ver. 2. And there was found at Achmetha] Or Ecbatana. This was occasioned by the malice of the Jews’ adversaries, and proved a great furtherance to the finishing of the temple. Sic canes lingunt ulcera Lazari. So dogs licked the sores of Lazarus. All things work together for good to them that love God, Romans 8:28. Venenum aliquando pro remedio fuit, At length a poison will be for a medicine. saith Seneca.

(2) At Achmetha.—That is, Ecbatana, the Median capital of Cyrus. It is probable that the original roll of parchment had been destroyed at Babylon by Smerdis, but a copy of it was found here, probably in a Chaldean transcript.

Verse 2. At Achmetha] Ecbatana in India, whither it is probable all the records of Cyrus had been carried. This was a sort of summer residence for the kings of Persia.

2. And there was found at Achmetha] R.V. margin, That is, Ecbatana. The precious document was not found at Babylon. It has been suggested that valuable records were hastily transferred from Babylon to Ecbatana during the short and disturbed reign of Pseudo-Smerdis, who would wish to destroy the edicts of his predecessors. But whatever the cause may have been, notice of its removal had been duly recorded, and the enquiry at Babylon led to search and identification at Ecbatana. Achmetha] This is the Aramaic transliteration of the Median capital known to us as ‘Ecbatana’ (Gr. ἐκβάτανα and ἀγβάτανα) of which the Persian pronunciation was something like ‘Hangmatβna’. It was the summer residence of the Persian kings. According to Herodotus it was built by king Deioces (708–655 b.c.) and surrounded with seven walls. Alexander the Great resided there in the autumn of 324. After his death, the city fell into insignificance until under the Parthian monarchy it once more became a royal residence. Under the Mohammedans the name became altered to Hamadan. An unhistorical description of the place is given in Jdt 1:1 ff. in the palace] The royal palace, which was probably also the citadel (bξrah, Greek βάρις) and the treasury. The Aramaic word is the same as the Hebrew rendered ‘palace’ (marg. or ‘castle’) in Nehemiah 1:1; Esther 1:2 &c.; Daniel 8:2 in reference to ‘Shushan’, and in 1 Chronicles 29:1; 1 Chronicles 29:19 in reference to ‘the Temple of Solomon’; ‘castle’, Nehemiah 2:8; Nehemiah 7:2 in reference to fortifications of Temple. in the province of the Medes] R.V. of Media. Literally ‘in the province of Madai’ (see Genesis 10:2). Media stretched north and south between the Caspian sea and the country of Elam, being bounded by Mt Zagros on the W. and by Parthia on the E. During the earlier period, of which we have an historical account in the Inscriptions, Media seems to have been a tributary province of the Assyrian Empire. She shook off the yoke probably in the reign of Assurbanipal (666–624); and the Median king Cyaxares joined with the Babylonian king Nabopolassar in the overthrow of Nineveh. Cyrus by his defeat of Astyages (550 b.c.) gained possession of Media, which he united with the Persian kingdom. was a record thus written] R.V. was thus written for a record. More literally accurate: the roll was to serve as the official memorandum.

“Achmetha” is the “Ecbatana,” or “Agbatana,” of the Greeks, the Persian name for which, as we find in the Behistun Inscription, was HaGMaTANa.

2. Achmetha — The Chaldee form of the Persian Hagmatana or Hagmatan, and the Ecbatana of the classical writers. Its site is usually identified with the modern Hamadan.