Analysis of anti-607 BCE Rebuttals

by Ethos 529 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  AnnOMaly

  However, Zedekiah was NOT recognized as the official kingly line.

  This is another important point. In addition to the Scripture texts you cited, Pterist, there is also the riddle of the cedar and vine in Jer. 17. The top of the cedar tree (Jehoiachin) was lopped off and brought to Babylon. In its place, 'a seed of the land' was planted and it became a low-growing vine (Zedekiah). The vine was going to wither away to nothing, while a cutting was to be taken from the top of the cedar and transplanted onto a mountain to become a majestic tree (Jehoiachin's line).

  JWs will immediately see some parallels with Dan. 4. If the kingdom was brought low with the removal of Jehoiachin, according to Jer. 17:13,14 (cf. also v. 24), why not apply the same to Dan. 4?
• 

  Pterist

  AnnOMaly ...*** JWs will immediately see some parallels with Dan. 4. If the kingdom was brought low with the removal of Jehoiachin, according to Jer. 17:13,14 (cf. also v. 24), why not apply the same to Dan. 4?***

  Interesting, I must check that out.

  Shalom and happy TG
• 

  AnnOMaly

  Happy TG to you too :-)
• 

  Pterist

  AnnOMaly ..*** AnnOMaly ...*** JWs will immediately see some parallels with Dan. 4.***

  Yes, Ezekiel 17 show clearly those who obey Jehovah and gonnto exile, receives his blessings and restoration aka Jechoniah's party, and those who disobey will NOT Zedekiah and the "Bad Figs"

  Dating for restoration of Zedekiah's group and settings dates on "THE 70 years exile to HIM" and subsequently to Christ kingship in 1914, is obviously meaningless and once again, more proof from the bible that confirms Russell's date settings as erroneous.
• 

  Ethos

  Jeffro: How very tedious. Ethos here acts as though the connection between Jeremiah 25:12 and Daniel 5:26-31 is merely something I've 'hastily' come up with. Though I did notice the obvious correlation prior to investigating what others had said on the matter, the connection is indeed quite well established (e.g. see John Gill's Exposition of the Bible). The special pleading for the NWT's own cross-references on the matter is nothing short of pathetic.

  Any biblical exegetical class will catechize you into the habit of understanding scriptural passages and Bible books on their own merit. In other words, you cannot flip back and forth between two books of completely different literary contexts, origins, and time periods and use one to qualify what the other meant. If Daniel 5 or 9 made a direct quote from Jeremiah or vice-versa, then you'd have an argument, but as I showed you the use of a cross-reference signified zilch. Simply put, you must understand Jeremiah on it's own terms. Multiple references from Jeremiah are verbatim reiterations of Leviticus 26, which in no uncertain terms connect the sabbaths to the 70 years (see my next post post). Jeremiah 28 serves as solid evidence that the Jews associated the 'breaking of the yoke of the king of Babylon' (the servitude) (V. 2-3) and Jeremiah 51 uses the synonymous drinking of the rage-inducing wine as a metaphor (from Jeremiah 25:15-18) and links the punishing of Babylon (the calling to account mentioned in 25:12-14) with the "vengeance of Jehovah, the vengeance for his temple" (cf. 51:12-13) which reiterates the yoke breakage and the utensil association with the servitude to Babylon from Hannaniah's false prophecy in Jeremiah 28. Everything is explained incontrovertibly there in Jeremiah and the hermeneutical links are all there. There is no need, in any way, shape, or form to appeal to Daniel 5 to qualify what Jeremiah 25 meant.

  Just because all the policies were not immediately changed, it was quite definitely a different administration. The Babylonian king was no longer ruling. When Obama replaced George Bush as president of the US, Bush's administration was replaced by Obama's administration. It did not require a change of all US policies. You are still also ignoring the fact that the 70 years (the period of Babylon's dominance) is not the same as the calamity (the 'cup', which affected different nations at different times). Jeremiah 25 says nothing about the 70 years being a period of Jews in Babylon. Once Babylon's king was dead, the Jews were subservient to the king of Persia. After they returned to Jerusalem, they were still subservient to the king of Persia.

  I never asserted that all the policies must have been changed in order for a new administration to begin ruling. I merely asserted that some policies should have. Can you provide us with any evidence that a significant number of Babylonian policies were changed before Cyrus' decree? Your presidential illustration is your strawman and it is nothing I have ever put forth. The day Obama is re-elected (Medes become the world power) and Bush loses office (Babylon is overthrown), there has no been no change or significant change in Bush's administrational policy. Barack Obama (Medes) has no execution of office until he is sworn into office several months later. He has no authority or abilityto change the previous administration's policy untilhe is sworn into office. Therefore, the nation continues subject to Bush's administration even though he is no longer president. Even when he is granted executional authority, he does not immediately make changes in policy. It takes considerable time to change an administration's policy (even in minor areas). Your illustration failed and only gave credence to what I have said previously. They were subservient to the king of Babylon because they were still under Babylon's policy and Cyrus (by both secular AND biblical sources) is appropriately titled 'king of Babylon'.

  I've already responded in a previous post regarding the selective interpretation in the NWT of 2 Chronicles 36:21 that attempts to associate the exile with the 70 years. I have also previously indicated that the Jews did not associate the exile with the 70 years (e.g. Ezekiel 40:1).

  Though he has not validly responded to anything above, nor has he responded at all to the problems the JW interpretation of Jeremiah 29:10 causes, as previously illustrated.

  Are these selective interpretations?

  God's Word Translation: "This happened so that the LORD's words spoken through Jeremiah would be fulfilled. The land had its years of rest and was made acceptable [again]. While it lay in ruins, [the land had its] 70 years of rest.

  All this was to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah: "Until the land has retrieved its lost sabbaths, during all the time it lies waste it shall have rest while seventy years are fulfilled. ""—The New American Bible.

  "Thus the word of the Lord spoken through Jeremiah came true, that the land must rest for seventy years to make up for the years when the people refused to observe the Sabbath."—The Living Bible

  DR Bible: "That the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremias might be fulfilled, and the land might keep her sabbaths: for all the days of the desolation she kept a sabbath, till the seventy years were expired."

  As if this weren't conclusive and clear enough, in my next post I will show you on a strictly lexicographical and hermenutical basis why the NWT and all these other 'biased scholars' render the passage this way. By referencing Ezekiel 40:1 you only show us that Ezekiel is counting his own exile from the time it started and not from the time the city was struck down. Well, duh. Obviously if there was an earlier exile those in that exile would count from the commencement of their exile, and not from a later one. That proves nothing. The Jeremiah 29 argument is also forthcoming.
• 

  PSacramento

  Where these 70 years based on the gregorian chronography or the Hebrew? did they include leap years? Who kept count while in exile?
• 

  AnnOMaly

  Where these 70 years based on the gregorian chronography or the Hebrew? did they include leap years? Who kept count while in exile?

  It was a luni-solar calendar - pre-Julian, pre-Gregorian. 12 lunar months of either 29 or 30 days, then every 3 years or so (there wasn't a rigid, fixed scheme then) a leap month was added.
• 

  TD

  Any biblical exegetical class will catechize you into the habit of understanding scriptural passages and Bible books on their own merit. In other words, you cannot flip back and forth between two books of completely different literary contexts, origins, and time periods and use one to qualify what the other meant.

  Humor a non-JW here. Jumping back and forth between Daniel and Revelation to establish the length of seven 'prophetic' times (Without which this discussion would probably be unnecessary..) has always struck me as dubious. These two books are certainly of different literary genres, languages, historical periods and origins.

  Without going off on a tangent, if a valid case can be made that esoteric concepts do in fact span those type of barriers, then I would question the strength of your objection above.
• 

  Ethos

  Is There Any Connection Whatsoever Between Jeremiah and Leviticus?:

  Jeffro and those who maintain 609 must repeat 'there is no connection between the sabbaths and the 70 years' (even though 2 Chronicles indeed makes that connection). To show a correlation between Jeremiah and Leviticus would conclusively destroy and dismantle all their arbitrary 609 interpretations. So is there a connection between the writings of Jeremiah and Leviticus? Let's see:

  Leviticus 26:29 "So YOU will have to eat the flesh of YOUR sons, and YOU will eat the flesh of YOUR daughters."
  Jeremiah 19:9 "And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters;"
  
  Leviticus 26:30 "And I shall certainly annihilate YOUR sacred high places"
  Jeremiah 19:3 "Here I am bringing a calamity upon this place,...5 And they built the high places"
  
  Leviticus 26:30 " lay YOUR own carcasses upon the carcasses of YOUR dungy idols"
  Jeremiah 33:5 "to fill places with the carcasses of the men whom I have struck down in my anger and in my rage,those who are coming to fight against the Chaldeans"
  
  Leviticus 26:31 "And I shall indeed give YOUR cities to the sword "
  Jeremiah 20:4 "all Judah I shall give into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will actually take them into exile in Babylon and strike them down with the sword."
  
  Leviticus 26:31 "and lay YOUR sanctuaries desolate"
  Jeremiah 9:11 "And I will make Jerusalem piles of stones,
  
  Leviticus 26:32 "And I, for my part, will lay the land desolate,"
  Jeremiah 9:11 "and the cities of Judah I shall make a desolate waste, without an inhabitant."
  
  Leviticus 26:32 "YOUR enemies who are dwelling in it will simply stare in amazement over it"
  Jeremiah 18:16 "in order to make their land an object of astonishment, for whistling at to time indefinite. Every last one passing along by it will stare in astonishment and shake his head"
  
  Leviticus 26:33 "And YOU I shall scatter among the nations"
  Jeremiah 9:16: "and I will scatter them among the nations"
  
  Leviticus 26:33 " YOUR land must become a desolation"
  Jeremiah 4:27 "A desolate waste is what the whole land will become"
  
  Leviticus 26:33 " and YOUR cities will become a desolate ruin"
  Jeremiah 9:11 "and the cities of Judah I shall make a desolate waste, without an inhabit"
  
  Leviticus 26:34 "all the days of its lying desolated, while YOU are in the land of YOUR enemies"
  Jeremiah 17:4 "you let loose, even of your own accord, from your hereditary possession that I had given you. I also will make you serve your enemies in the land that you have not known"
  
  Leviticus 26:34 "the land will keep sabbath, as it must repay its sabbaths"
  Jeremiah 16:18 "I will repay the full amount of their error and of their sin, on account of their profaning my land"
  
  Leviticus 26:35 "All the days of its lying desolated it will keep sabbath, for the reason that it did not keep sabbath during YOUR sabbaths when YOU were dwelling upon it"

  Jeremiah 17:27 “‘“But if YOU will not obey me by sanctifying the sabbath day and not carrying a load, but there is a coming in [with it] through the gates of Jerusalem on the sabbath day, I will also set a fire ablaze in her gates, and it will certainly devour the dwelling towers of Jerusalem and will not be extinguished.”’”

  There are verbatim quotes and references from Leviticus 26 to Jeremiah ubiquitously, and this is why Ezra's words at 2 Chronicles 36:21 (in addition to these direct quotes) connect the keeping of the sabbaths to the fulfillment of the 70 years. "21 to fulfill Jehovah’s word by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had paid off its sabbaths. All the days of lying desolated it kept sabbath, to fulfill seventy years." Jeffro and others continue to object to the Bible's plain words and even try to object to the NWT's rendering but as we showed previously other translations take even more liberties and give you a clear postulation as to what Ezra meant.

  TD: I agree. That is why when I teach my Bible students the 1914 doctrine, the Gentile Times is the last thing I teach them. I establish it based on Revelation's own merit and the empirical evidence that points to it.
• 

  Pterist

  For a good overview of the decline of the Assyrian Empire refer to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (see article in Britannica CD 99: The History of Ancient Mesopotamia: Mesopotamia to the end of the: THE NEO-ASSYRIAN EMPIRE (746-609): Decline of the Assyrian empire). Here it describes how the Assyrian empire, after becoming weakened through civil war, fell to the combined forces of the Medes and the Babylonians, finally being extinguished in 609 BC. In this final battle, the Assyrians and the Egyptians fought side-by-side. Prior to being conquered by the Medes and Babylonians, the Egyptians fought against Judah - and Judah lost. This is the battle where Josiah was killed. The chronology of Judah places this event in 608 BC - but that is close enough to 609 BC when a 1 year margin of error is assumed.

  The following time period emerges:

  

  This is the proper fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy.

  The seventy years is also referred to in Chronicles. This segment begins with Nebuchadnezzar carrying into exile the people of Judah after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. - the third and final incident where people from Judah were taken into exile.

  2 Chronicles 36:20-23 (NIV)

  He [Nebuchadnezzar] carried into exile to Babylon the remnant, who escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and his sons until the kingdom of Persia came to power. The land enjoyed its sabbath rests; all the time of its desolation it rested, until the seventy years were completed in fulfillment of the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah . In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and to put it in writing: "This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: 'The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Anyone of his people among you--may the Lord his God be with him, and let him go up.'"

  At first glance, this segment seems to imply that the desolation of Jerusalem would last 70 years. Read it again, and you will see that this is in fact not the case. This segment states that now that Jerusalem has been destroyed, the land would lay desolate at least until the seventy-year prophecy of Jeremiah was fulfilled. Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 B.C. The seventy-year prophecy ended with Babylon's fall in 539 B.C., and the people of Judah were allowed to return to Jerusalem by decree of Cyrus II in 538 B.C. So Jerusalem lay desolate from 586 - 538 B.C. - a total of 48 years.

  The one other place where the seventy-year prophecy of Jeremiah is referred to is in the book of Daniel:

  Daniel 9:1-3 (NIV)

  In the first year of Darius son of Xerxes (a Mede by descent), who was made ruler over the Babylonian kingdom -- in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years . So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes.

  In this passage it also seems at first glance that Daniel believes Jerusalem would lay desolate for 70 years. But if this is the case, why is he so earnest in his prayer to God in behalf of his people. This segment comes in the first year of the rule of the Medes and Persians - i.e. 539/538 B.C. At this point, Jerusalem has laid desolate for only 48 years, so surely there would be another 22 years to go?

  No, Daniel seems keen on the idea that the seventy-years is in fact now over and that the exiled people of Judah should return to Jerusalem as God had promised. This can only be the case if Daniel understood the seventy years as referring to the length of time that Babylon would rule, and not to the desolation of Jerusalem. So like the writer of Chronicles, Daniel understood that after Jerusalem was destroyed it would lay desolate for the remainder of the seventy-year period. Hence Daniel says that "the desolation of Jerusalem would last [the] seventy years." Now that the seventy years is up, Daniel is asking God "How much longer?" As it turns out, he had less than a year to wait until Cyrus II gave the decree allowing the people of Judah to return to Jerusalem.