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  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Fwd: Re: Daniel and history
  • Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2009 09:48:03 +0100

Dear Thory,

There were different viewpoints among ancient writers regarding the length of the exile. Josephus has both 70 years and 50 years, The Sibylline Oracles has 7 decades, the Testament of Moses has 77 years, and Seder Olam quotes Rabbi Judah who believed the exile lasted 52 years. So, we cannot trust the ancient sources.

The words of Zecharia 7:5, by mentioning the fast in the seventh month suggest that the 70-year period started with the murder of Gedaljah (2 Kings 25:25). The temple was destroyed and Jerusalem was in ruins, and only a few poor people may have remained in the land. This is shown by the following quotes from Jeremiah (NIV):

Jer 4:7 He has left his place to lay waste your land. Your towns will lie in ruins
without inhabitant.
Jer 4:27 "The whole land will be ruined, though I will not destroy it completely.

Jer 7:34 I will bring an end to the sounds of joy and gladness and to the voices of bride and bridegroom in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, for the land will become desolate.

Jer 10:22 Listen! The report is coming-a great commotion from the land of the north! It will make the towns of Judah desolate, a haunt of jackals.

Jer 25:18 Jerusalem and the towns of Judah, its kings and officials, to make them a ruin and an object of horror and scorn and cursing, as they are today;

Jer 44:22 "This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: You saw the great disaster I brought on Jerusalem and on all the towns of Judah. Today they lie deserted and in ruins.

The promise was a reversal of the desolate situation, as the following quotes show:

Jer 32:42-43 "This is what the LORD says: As I have brought all this great calamity on this people, so I will give them all the prosperity I have promised them.
Once more fields will be bought in this land of which you say, 'It is a desolate waste, without men or animals, for it has been handed over to the Babylonians.'

Jer 33:10 "This is what the LORD says: 'You say about this place, "It is a desolate waste, without men or animals." Yet in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are deserted, inhabited by neither men nor animals, there will be heard once more.

Jer 33:12-13 "This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'In this place, desolate and without men or animals-in all its towns there will again be pastures for shepherds to rest their flocks.
In the towns of the hill country, of the western foothills and of the Negev, in the territory of Benjamin, in the villages around Jerusalem and in the towns of Judah, flocks will again pass under the hand of the one who counts them,' says the LORD.

Isaiah 44:26 who carries out the words of his servants and fulfills the predictions of his messengers, who says of Jerusalem, 'It shall be inhabited,'of the towns of Judah, 'They shall be built,'and of their ruins, 'I will restore them,'

In 2 Chronicles 36:21 we learn that the the land was desolate for 70 years as a sabbath rest. Then in v. 22 the decree of Cyrus is mentioned, and it is said that this decree came "in order to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah. The book of Ezra starts with the same decree, and in chapter 3 we learn that in the 7th month the people lived in their cities and the altar was erected. Now the situation was reversed, and the land was no longer a desolate waste. Thus, the returning of the people to their land is connected with the end of the 70 years. The reason why all these clear words are not accepted, as we can see in several commentaries, is that they are at odds with the traditional Neo-Babylonian chronology. Two solutions for a harmoniztion are suggested, 1) the 70 years should not be taken in a literal way, and 2) the 70 years did not refer to a total desolation and then a restoration.

Then back to Zecharia, who two times (1:12 and 7:5) mentions the period of 70 years. Do these verses show that the 70 years still lasted in the days of Zechariah. If so, there must have been two different periods of 70 years, because the first mentioning of the 70 years was uttered in Darius' 1st year, and the second was uttered in his 4th year. The NIV misleads the readers in 7:5 by adding the word "past" (for the past 70 years). The Hebrew text has the demonstrative pronoun before "70" in both cases, and this requires an antecedent. So the use of the demonstrative shows that a particular period of 70 years, which was already mentioned or which was known was referred to. And this is corroborated by the two year interval between the mentioning of the 70 years. Therefore, Zechariah refers to the 70 year period when the land was desolate and when they fasted and mourned, and in no way does he suggest that the period of 70 years still lasted in his days.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo






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


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