Isaiah names Cyrus

Isaiah names Cyrus — not a title, not a portrait, the name and the job. My shepherd, with Jerusalem to be built and the temple's foundation laid.

In plain words

Isaiah names Cyrus: the name and the job, rebuild Jerusalem and lay the temple's foundation. Critical scholarship dates these chapters to about 540 BC, which would make the name a caption rather than a forecast; even that answer concedes the precision, and the row stays open.

The mechanism

PLANTED / PAID — even the sceptic's move is a testimony to the precision: the objection is not that this is vague and got lucky, it is that this is too precise to be a guess, so it must be back-dated

Scripture

Isaiah 44:28; 45:1

How it was checked

• EvidenceT3 SCRIPTURE; Status: OPEN
• Letter eraTHE PROPHETS AND THE ROAD 776 BC to 4 BC
• Plate — The Great Isaiah Scroll, on display at the Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, Jerusalem · CC BY-SA 2.0 · source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Isaiah_scroll_at_the_Shrine_of_the_Book.jpg
• SourcesSCRIPTURE — Isaiah 44:28, 45:1