@Spade:
What's a nightmare is repeating information more than once that directly addresses an argument (I'm not doing it again). It's people like you that have a serious problem with reading and comprehension.
And all this land must become a devastated place, an object of astonishment, and these nations will have to serve the king of Babylon seventy years. Jeremiah 25:11
Wonderful! Excellent! This is exactly what I was talking about. You spout off how its been such a nightmare for you to repeat information that you say "directly addresses" the objections to 607, all the while completely missing the points made by all other posters. And then, for icing on the cake, so-to-speak, you quote the scripture that everyone has been trying to dissect for you using proper grammar, misapplying it by highlighting only the first clause and ignoring the rest.
So here it is again, color coded for your reading pleasure. Perhaps the colors will help you understand that Jeremiah 25:11 is actually a compound sentence (note, for more information about compound sentences, click here)
And all this land must become a devastated place, an object of astonishment, andthese nations will have to serve the king of Babylonseventy years. Jeremiah 25:11
yellow = subject
orange = verb
red = coordinating conjunction
green = object
blue = adverb, modifies a verb.
Note: its a compound sentence. That means Jeremiah 25:11 is really two separate and complete sentences joined by a coordinating conjuction - like "and" (as it is in this case). Because we are really dealing with two separate sentences, there is a subject and predicate on both sides of the "and". Both sides express two separate thoughts. So you have the first side: "And all this land must become a devastated place, an object of astonishment"
STOP.. that's it. That's the entire first thought. Simply expressing that "this land" would be devasted.
And now the second thought: "these nations will have to serve the king of Babylon seventy years." What's the subject? It's "these nations" performing the action of the verb. What verb? SERVITUDE! What's the object, the recipient of the action? It's the "king of Babylon". And at the very end, we come across the adverb "for seventy years". What verb is it modifying? Why, its the only one in the second clause - SERVITUDE.
I know what you want the verse to say. You want it to say this: "And all this land must become a devasted place for seventy years, an object of astonishment, and these nations will have to servce the king of Babylon seventy years." But you can't do that without completely ignorning grammar. Yes, Jerusalem would become devasted. But the devastion is not - REPEAT - IS NOT - connected to the seventy years. Only the servitude is.
And I will make Jerusalem piles of stones, the lair of jackals; and the cities of Judah I shall make a desolate waste, without an inhabitant. Jeremiah 9:11
YAY! Another ignorant remark. I would direct the lurking JW up a few posts where AnnOMaly pointed out, quite rightly, that the exact same expression was used for Babylon when it was defeated in 539 BC - yet, it was not "without inhabitant". Poetic expression lost on you? Not necessarily a grammatical short fall on your part, but still...
Daniel bore witness to the prophecy pronounced by Jeremiah as exclusive to the Israelites. In the first year of Da·ri′us the son of A·has·u·e′rus of the seed of the Medes, who had been made king over the kingdom of the Chal·de′ans; in the first year of his reigning I myself, Daniel, discerned by the books the number of the years concerning which the word of Jehovah had occurred to Jeremiah the prophet, for fulfilling the devastations of Jerusalem, [namely,] seventy years. Daniel 9:1-2
Daniel bore no such witness. Read the verse carefully. You completely skipped over the work "fulfilling" - you didn't even highlight it in your bold section. It's like it never registered in your brain.
You see, when it comes to human langage, we have something called vocabulary - that is, we have words with meaning. And if a word appears in a sentence you aren't supposed to just ignore the word. If you do, then you actually miss out on some of the meaning in the sentence. I know, I know. This must seem very radical to you...
Daniel "discerned by the books the number of the years concerning which the word of Jehovah has occured to Jeremiah" - how many years? 70. Years of what? SERVITUDE! Daniel is citing Jeremiah. He's not contradicting Jeremiah, he's citing Jeremiah. Jeremiah did not say seventy years of desolation. He wrote seventy years of SERVITUDE of many nations, not just Judah (these nations). Daniel discerned the 70 years of servitude from Jeremiah, that when expired, would mean the FULFILLING - or ENDING - of the devastations. The end of the seventy years would, by consequence, bring the end of the "devastations" on Jerusalem. READ IT CAREFULLY.
Oh, and thanks for helping all the lurking JWs understand the WTB&TS has no leg to stand on....
MeanMrMustard
