Cyrus is called messiah and honored above nearly all Jewish rulers

Evidence

And then of course comes Cyrus, mentioned more particularly in the later chapters of Isaiah, what the Bible critics call Deutero-Isaiah, that part of the Book of Isaiah dating from after the Babylonian captivity. … The language used of Cyrus is little short of astonishing. He is spoken of in the Hebrew text as God’s anointed, messiah, and he is accorded greater respect, not only than any other non-Jewish ruler, but almost any Jewish ruler. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 293

Categorization

• QUESTION: What did Cyrus actually do for the Jews to earn this? The messiah title for a pagan king subverts the usual biblical pattern.
• SHARE: A Jewish friend or scholar would appreciate this oddity — the only non-Jewish ruler called messiah in the Hebrew Bible.
• SEED: Piece angle: when a foreign conqueror becomes a liberator — how Cyrus’s reputation was manufactured by the conquered, not the conqueror.