Fisherman:
It is important to take note of this because some people can argue that God let the Jews out earlier than 70 years and reconcile 586 but that cannot apply to the land. Therefore, if 539 was the end of the 70 year desolation of the land, the desolation must have begun 70 years earlier.
“21 to fulfill Jehovah’s word spoken by Jeremiah, until the land had paid off its sabbaths. All the days it lay desolate it kept sabbath, to fulfill 70 years.” —2chr 2: 21
ALL the days
A dishonest rendering, coupled with an equally erroneous conclusion. The parenthetical phrase rendered there as “until the land had paid off its sabbaths. All the days it lay desolate it kept sabbath” is from Leviticus 26:34-35 and isn’t the “word spoken by Jeremiah” at all. Making the second part of that quote the beginning of the sentence ending with the part about 70 years is simply wrong. Babylon’s 70 years definitely ended in 539 BCE. But ‘serving Babylon’ didn’t mean exile, and exile is explicitly identified as a punishment for refusing to serve Babylon (Jeremiah 27:8-11).
A group of Jews returned to rebuild the temple in 538 BCE (though many Jews stayed in Babylon). Going back to Leviticus chapter 25, verse 8 indicates 49 years of sabbaths, which is entirely consistent with the period from the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE (not 586) until 538 BCE.
Also, the paper doesn’t purport to identify 586 as the year of Jerusalem’s destruction, but instead uses a traditional date of the event as a basis for comparing magnetic levels to establish approximate dates for other events.