Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Tory Thorpe <torythrp AT yahoo.com>]

Dear Rolf,

My name is Tory, not 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.

Although the ancient sources are not without problems let us not miss that 
Josephus corrected his 70 years from the destruction of the Temple to the 1st 
year of Cyrus to 50 in his later work. Neither Josephus or Rabbi Judah had 
access to the Canon of Ptolemy for the length of the Neo-Babylonian period 
subsequent to the destruction of Jerusalem. Yet their numbers pretty much 
agree with Ptolemy's year count.

> 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. 

If there was even a single person, poor or not, still remaining in the land 
following the destruction of the Temple and the beginning of the Exile, we 
are precluded from interpreting "desolate waste without man or animal" as 
lasting 25566.954 days. Even a few poor folk require animals to work the land 
they have been left on. Thus statements like "desolate waste without man or 
animal" is intended as prophetic hyperbole, as per the Sages, because the 
Temple was utterly destroyed and left in ruins. It was in a very real sense 
the end of the world.

> 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. 

I will agree that from the viewpoint of the biblical authors the land was to 
them desolate for 70 years as a sabbath rest. This just tells us the thinking 
of the writers, not necessarily what was actually happening on the ground. 
But this desolation they describe is clearly tied up by them with the 
condition of the Temple, the House in Jerusalem, not just what was happening 
in the farmer's field or in the towns. The land was by the writers deemed a 
desolate waste keeping its sabbaths for as long as there was no functioning 
Temple. In the 1st year of Cyrus we see not the end of this mythic desolation 
of land without a single person or animal but the beginning of its end when 
the king of Persia issued a decree calling for the rebuilding of the Temple.

> 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. 

I don't think Josephus or Rabbi Judah had any notion of what "traditional 
Neo-Babylonian chronology" was, and absolutely not Rabbi Judah. And yet they 
both give about the same year count as we do today for the Neo-Babylonian 
period following the destruction of the Temple, and this without any help 
from Ptolemy and his king-list. And I don't believe the words of Jeremiah are 
any less clear if we understand them as apparently Josephus and Rabbi Judah 
did, i.e. not overly pedantic.

> 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. 

Looks to me to be one and the same 70-year period, alluded to in the 2nd (not 
1st) year of Darius and again in the 4th year of this king.

> 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. 

The demonstrative merely shows that a predicted 70-year period was known. 
Because we were still fasting in the fifth and seventh months when Darius I 
reached his 4th regnal year as king of Persia, it is obvious that "this 70 
years" was still in progress at that time. To say that Zechariah was refering 
to a 70-year period that ended previous to the 4th year of Darius I think 
turns 7:5 on its head. The main thrust of Zechariah's words throughout the 
book seems to be to inspire the returnees to finish what they started and 
rebuild the Temple, i.e. bring "this 70 years" to an end.

Tory Thorpe
Modiin, Israel