The 120 Satraps in the Reign of Darius the Mede
The 120 satraps and three ministers described in Daniel 6 vastly exceed any attested count of Persian administrative divisions, which Ron argues marks the number as typological rather than historical — built, like the 127 provinces of Esther 1:1, on the sexagesimal round number 120 that elsewhere denotes a maximal human lifespan (Genesis 6:3, Deuteronomy 34:7). He further traces how this idealized figure likely became the basis for the traditionally cited membership of 120 in the rabbinic Men of the Great Assembly, and, through it, for the 120-seat Knesset.
The Number of Satrapies
The opening verses of Daniel chapter 6 describe the system of governance under the rule of Darius the Mede, It pleased Darius to appoint over the kingdom one hundred and twenty satraps to be in charge of the whole kingdom; over them were three ministers, one of them Daniel, to whom these satraps reported, in order that the king not be troubled (Dan. 6:2-3). The term for satrap in this verse, ahashdarpenaya, is derived from the Old Persain khshathapavan, ‘protector of the province,’ which was translated in Greek as satrápes, from which the term satrap is derived.
Historically, the actual number of satrapies in the Persian Empire ranged from the twenties to low thirties, varying in different periods. The numbers shift even within the reign of one emperor. For example, the Bisitun inscription of Darius I lists 23 satrapies, while his inscription from Naqsh-e Rustam has 29. Herodotus in his Histories (3:89) states that there were twenty satrapies under Darius I. Some of the variations are explained as stemming from different ways of counting the various divisions of the Persian Empire, and the fact that what were termed the Great Satrapies were comprised of land that already had administrative subdivisions before becoming part of the Persian Empire, subdivisions which were sometimes counted as satrapies as well.1 Even though the biblical Darius the Mede has not been identified conclusively with any known historical figure,2 the number given here is far beyond any possible sum of satrapies anytime during the Persian period.
The satrapies were subdivided into districts called a medina (medinta in Aramaic), which was administered by a governor (peha). The very high numbers of satrapies and provinces recorded here, and in Esther 1:1 under Ahasuerus, are understood to reflect a basic total of all the many subdivisions into provinces, using the round number of one hundred to refer to all the minor districts added to the actual number of satrapies.3
Symbolic Numbers
The fact that both the number of satrapies given here (120) and in Esther 1:1 (127) are numbers that appear elsewhere in the Torah indicates that they were chosen as a kind of typological number. As is well known, 120 appears as the lifespan of humans in Gen. 6:3, and that of Moses in particular in Deut. 34:7,4 and 127 are the years of Sarah’s life in Gen. 23:1.5 The biblical use of these numbers is based on the sexagesimal mathematical system of ancient Mesopotamia, where 60 is the basic unit. In this system, 120 (60 x 2) is the only round typological number that could represent a reasonable maximum human lifespan.6 The number 127 also fits into this approach, as it is 120 with the addition of the sacred number 7.7 Both of these numbers therefore represent a very large number that is still within reason for the matter at hand, making them suitable as a typological number used to describe the multiple administrative divisions of the Persian empire.
There is no historical record of three ministers who were set over the satraps.8 These three administrative figures are also mentioned in the story of the bodyguards in the Greek version of Ezra, Esdras I, 3:9, as “the three Persian magnates.”9 The Septuagint version of Esther also mentions three Persian chiefs, where the Masoretic Text has seven (Esther 1:14).
Three also has great significance, as it is the first odd number after the unit. It was considered a very significant number in the ancient world, “we need recall only the popularity of trinities of gods, or the three Biblical festivals and cities of refuge. The number three occurs more often in magical texts than any other.”10
Taken together, the system of government described in Daniel 6:2-3 with the 120 satraps and three ministers represents a kind of idealized administrative system containing symbolic numbers.
The Great Assembly
Rabbinic literature mentions the Men of the Great Assembly in multiple instances, acting as a link between the biblical prophets and the time period recorded in Tanakh and the rabbinic era that began being recorded in the Mishna. This is famously described in Mishna Avot 1:1, “Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly.” Avot dRabbi Natan 1 has an expanded version of this chain of tradition, including, “Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi received from the Prophets. The Men of the Great Assembly received from Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.”
The Men of the Great Assembly are considered responsible for fixing the formulas of the prayers and blessings, including the Amida, kiddush and havdalah (TB Berakhot 33a), as well as composing some of the books of Tanakh (Ezekiel, the Twelve Prophets, Daniel and the Scroll of Esther) (TB Baba Batra 15a). They are associated with the time period of Ezra and Nehemiah, as stated by Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi: “Why are they called the members of the Great Assembly? Because they returned the crown (of the Holy One, Blessed be He) to its former glory” by referring to God as The great, the mighty, and the awesome God (Neh. 9:32), (TB Yoma 69b). Maimonides, in the introduction to his Mishneh Torah lists the biblical figures traditionally enumerated among its members, “The members of Ezra’s court are referred to as the Men of the Great Assembly. They included Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, Nehemiah ben Hakaliah, Mordechai the linguist, Zerubavel and many other sages.” Some scholars question the historical veracity of this body, or see it as an ad hoc group that convened only at momentous historical occasions,11 but it is always identified as starting to operate in the Persian era.
There are a few traditions regarding how many members were in this group. The Jerusalem Talmud Megilla 1:5 says that there were 85 members, which may represent a rounding up of the 83 signatories of the reestablished covenant in Nehemiah 10:2-28. TB Megilla 17b gives the more popular version of their number, “Rabbi Yoḥanan said, and some say that it was taught in a baraita: A hundred and twenty elders, and among them several prophets.” It has been speculated that this number is based on the 120 names in the list of exiles returning to Judea in Ezra chapter 2, or the combined sum of names in Nehemiah chapters 11 and 12. However, those numbers only work if we include the place names in those lists and well as the names of actual people.12
A simple explanation for the traditional number of 120 for the members of the Men of the Great Assembly is that it is based on the number of satraps in Daniel 6. The idealized representation of the governing body of the Persian Empire became the model for the governing body of the Judeans, itself an idealized group, also attributed to the same time period. The parallel can even extend to the three ministers listed, as they represent the last three prophets of Jewish tradition, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, the prophets of the post-exilic Persian era, said to be part of the Great Assembly themselves or their immediate predecessors.
While it may seem odd to base the number of elders in a Jewish group on the number of Persian royal officials, this is found explicitly in another context in TB Megilla 23a in a discussion regarding how the number of aliyot at Torah reading was determined. “One said: These numbers (3, 5, 7) correspond to the number of Hebrew words in the three verses of the Priestly Benediction. And one said: (These numbers) correspond to the three guards of the door (II Kings 25:18), five (of the officers) who saw the king’s face (II Kings 25:19), and the seven (officers) who saw the king’s face (Esther 1:14). Rav Yosef taught: The three, five, and seven people (who read from the Torah correspond to the) three guards of the door, five who saw the king’s face, and the seven who saw the king’s face.” The last is a reference to the officers serving under Ahasuerus, His closest advisers were Carshena, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshish, Meres, Marsena, and Memucan, the seven ministers of Persia and Media who had access to the royal presence and occupied the first place in the kingdom (Esther 1:14).
It is an irony of history that the 120 member Israeli Knesset, a number chosen to recall the Men of the Great Assembly,13 is ultimately based on the government of the Persian Empire as described in Daniel 6.
Footnotes
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Maria Brosius, A History of Ancient Persia: The Achaemenid Empire (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), pp. 117-118. ↩
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Louis Hartman and Alexander Di Lella, The Anchor Bible: Book of Daniel (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1978), pp. 35-36. ↩
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Louis Hartman and Alexander Di Lella, The Anchor Bible: Book of Daniel (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1978), pp. 197-198. ↩
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See also 2 Chron. 5:12. ↩
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Most famously used by R. Akiva to wake up his students in Esther Rabbah 1:8, “Rabbi Akiva was sitting and teaching, and the students were dozing off. He sought to arouse them. He said: What was Esther’s merit to rule over 127 provinces? Such said the Holy One, blessed be He: Let Esther, the descendant of Sarah, who lived for 127 years, and rule over 127 countries.” ↩
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Jeffrey Tigay, The JPS Torah Commentary - Deuteronomy (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1996), p. 338. ↩
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Nahum Sarna, Understanding Genesis (New York: Schoken Books, 1970), pp. 83-84. ↩
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Louis Hartman and Alexander Di Lella, The Anchor Bible: Book of Daniel (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1978), p. 198. ↩
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Note also that the story is set in the reign of Draius I and it is stated that he had 127 satrapies (I Esdras 3:2). ↩
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Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition (New York: Athenium, 1984), p. 119. ↩
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See Elias Bickerman, The Jews in the Greek Age (Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 145; Lawrence Schiffman, From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism (Hoboken, New Jersey: Ktav Publishing House, 1991), p. 68. ↩
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See Yoel Bin-Nun, “Anshei Knesset haGedola hem Hotmei haAmana bMa’amad Ezra v’Nehemiah” in Mishlav vol. 36 (2001), pp. 8-9. ↩
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Barry Rubin, Israel: An Introduction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), p. 15. ↩
Zvi Ron received semikhah from the Israeli Rabbanut and his Ph.D. in Jewish Theology from Spertus University. He is an educator living in Neve Daniel, Israel, and the author of Sefer Katan ve-Gadol (Rossi Publications, 2006) about the large and small letters in Tanakh, Sefer HaIkkar Haser (Mossad Harav Kook, 2017) about the variant spellings of words in Tanakh, and Jewish Customs: Exploring Common and Uncommon Minhagim (Koren, 2024). He is on the staff of the Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel series, and is the Editor of The Jewish Bible Quarterly.
Cite this article
Zvi Ron. "The 120 Satraps in the Reign of Darius the Mede." Jewish Bible Quarterly 53, no. 2 (April – June 2025): 121–125.
Zvi Ron. "The 120 Satraps in the Reign of Darius the Mede." Jewish Bible Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 2, 2025, pp. 121–125.