Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Tory Thorpe <torythrp AT yahoo.com>]

Dear Rolf,

I apologize and didn't mean to suggest that your argument rests on the 
meaning of a single word. However, more importantly than me reading through 
Hebrew Jeremiah in its entirety, something I have done many times, there is 
also the traditional understanding of "the land as desolate waste without men 
and animal" for 70 years found in the commentaries and Seder Olam. The Sages 
have also read through Hebrew Jeremiah in its entirety many times but do not 
share your conclusion about the 70 years.

This of course doesn't mean you are wrong, but it does mean there is no 
a-priori reason to accept a conclusion that 70 years of desolation without 
men and animal is meant to be taken literally and so must mean a land without 
a single inhabitant or animal from the day the Temple was destroyed, and the 
exile commenced, to the 1st year of Cyrus. That does not square with the 
archealogical record anyway. Score one for the Sages.

Because of the statements in Zech 1:12-21, I don't think it is special 
pleading to say that even after the Exiles returned to Jerusalem and Judea 
and built homes in the 1st year of Cyrus, they, or at least the prophets 
among them, still regarded Jerusalem as a desolate waste so long as the 
Temple remained unfinished and in ruins. As the Sages would undoubtedly say, 
the Temple in ruins is the equivalent to Jerusalem utterly desolate and 
without man or beast.

Tory Thorpe
Modiin, Israel