The entire point of the the 'writing on the wall' was in fulfilment of Jeremiah's statement that Babylon's king would be called to account (TE'KEL - you have been weighed and found deficient) at the end of the 70 years (ME'NE - God has numbered the days of your kingdom). That is the entire purpose of the event. It is grossly ignorant to suggest otherwise. If the two passages are considered logically it takes a very strong bias to suggest that one is not in fulfilment of the other.
Daniel's Prophecy, 605 BCE or 624 BCE?
by Little Bo Peep 763 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Narkissos
Jeffro,
Imo the book of Daniel has lost sight of the original meaning of Jeremiah, which clearly referred (as a round figure) to the time of Babylon's domination over several (hyperbolically "all") nations.
Daniel instead starts from the later, artificial, sabbatical interpretation of the 70 years as referring to the desolation of the land of Judah (2 Chronicles 36:21-23). But he modifies it in turn by focusing on Jerusalem (Daniel 9:2) and expanding the 70 years into 70 weeks (sabbaths) of years (9:24ff), in order to reach what is to him the real goal of the "prophecy," namely the time of Antiochus IV in the second quarter of the 2nd century BC.
This is one early example of reinterpretation of an old "prophecy," which was considered as unsufficiently fulfilled ("it shall be built again with streets and moat, but in a troubled time," v. 25) and calling for a "greater fulfillment" -- which implies an expansion of the former time frame.
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Jeffro
Imo the book of Daniel has lost sight of the original meaning of Jeremiah, which clearly referred (as a round figure) to the time of Babylon's domination over several (hyperbolically "all") nations.
Narkissos,
You raised aspects of Daniel chapter 9, which are not related to the point I was making. We don't want to confuse poor scholar do we?
Daniel chapter 5 fully supports the intent of Jeremiah that the 70 years (whether viewed as a round figure OR exactly) ended in 539 when the king was called to account. The 70 years (whether exact or not) could not end after the event which Jeremiah said would occur once they were fulfilled. -
Narkissos
We don't want to confuse poor scholar do we?
Imo Scholar is well beyond confusion.
Daniel chapter 5 fully supports the intent of Jeremiah that the 70 years (whether viewed as a round figure OR exactly) ended in 539 when the king was called to account. The 70 years (whether exact or not) could not end after the event which Jeremiah said would occur once they were fulfilled.
Perhaps I misread you.
From the perspective of Jeremiah (25; 27; 29) it is entirely clear that the 70 years come to an end with the fall of Babylon and the end of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty, not later. On this I totally agree with you.
Whereas the Daniel 5 story is intended as a narrative of this event, and interestingly testifies to a tradition that the death of the last king coincides with the fall of the city ("that very night," v. 30), I meant to point out that Daniel's conception of the 70 years is different from Jeremiah's.
Nitpicking perhaps. But the wrong assumption that "the 70 years" mean the same period everywhere in the Bible is exactly what the WT is building upon. With this wrong premise we are bound to endless discussion (as this thread amply shows) over which texts give the plain interpretation of "the 70 years" (you say Jeremiah does, the WT says 1 Chronicles does), then have to attempt explaining the other texts away as meaning the same thing when they don't. Getting rid of the wrong assumption first saves a lot of time and allows for a better understanding of each text imo.
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Leolaia
The crucial concept for Daniel is that the original 70 years were expanded into 490 years (7 x 70) because of the "sevenfold curse" in Leviticus 26:
"And if, in spite of this, you do not listen to me but set yourselves against me, I will set myself against you in fury and punish you sevenfold for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your high places and smash your altars of incense; I will pile your corpses on the corpses of your idols, and I will cast you off. I will reduce your cities to ruins ... I will make such a desolation of the land that your enemies who come to live there will be appalled by it. And I will scatter you among the nations I will unsheathe the sword against you to make your land a waste and your towns a ruin. Then the land will observe its sabbaths indeed, lying desolate there, while you are in the land of your enemies. Then indeed the land will rest and observe its sabbaths .... The land will keep its sabbaths, as it lies desolate when they are gone. But they must atone for sin, for they have spurned my customs and laws" (Leviticus 26:27-35, 43).
2 Chroncles 36:21 is the first text to apply the Levitical sabbath-year concept to Jeremiah's prophecy of the 70 years, but it sticks to a literal period of 70 years. The author of Daniel, on the other hand, wanted to explain why Judah was still being punished by the Gentiles (most notably in the horrific persecution of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the central character of Daniel) all the way down to the second century BC, even though the Temple had been rebuilt and the priesthood restablished many centuries earlier. The answer was that the Jews had not yet atoned for their sin because Yahweh had punished them seven times over. That Leviticus 26 was before the mind of the author of Daniel is indicated in Daniel 9:11-12:
"The whole of Israel has flouted your Law and turned away, unwilling to listen to your voice; and the curse and imprecation written in the Law of Moses, the servant of God, have come pouring down on us because we have sinned against him. He has carried out the threats which he made against us and against the princes who governed us, that he would bring so great a disaster down on us that the fate of Jerusalem would find no parallel in the history of the world. And now all this disaster has happened to us, just as it is written in the Law of Moses; even so, we have not tried to appease Yahweh our God by renouncing our crimes and being guided by your truth" (Daniel 9:11-12).
Because they have not renounced their crimes by the time of the overthrow of Babylon, the curses would not be fulfilled yet. And so Gabriel explains that the 70 years are in reality 490 years "for putting an end to transgression, for placing the seals on sin, for expiating crime" (v. 24). Because the original period is being expanded, the starting point of the 490 years is also the starting point of the original 70 years for the author of Daniel. The 490 years are further divided into three portions: 7 weeks (7 x 7 = 49 years), 62 weeks (7 x 62 = 434 years), and a final 1 week (7 x 1 = 7 years) that is split in half. Note that the first portion is significantly shorter than 70 years; this indicates that some major change would occur with God's people before the original 70 years come to an end. The start of the 70/490 years is "the time when the word went forth to return and rebuild Jerusalem" (v. 25), and most critics understand this to be "the word revealed by Yahweh to the prophet Jeremiah" in v. 2:
"The word that was addressed to Jeremiah by Yahweh in the tenth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzer...'I am now putting this city into the power of the Chaldeans, into the power of Nebuchadnezzer king of Babylon and he will capture it ... I will bring them back to this place and make them live in safety. Then they shall be my poeple and I will be their God...I will restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem and build them again as they were before" (Jeremiah 32:1, 28, 37, 33:7; compare 31:38-40).
That the author had this text in mind is also indicated by the prayer in v. 4-19 which parallels Jeremiah's prayer in Jeremiah 32:17-25 and contains some allusions to it:
"Yahweh our God is just in all his dealings with us, and we have not listened to his voice. And now, Lord our God, who by your mighty hand brought us out of the land of Egypt, the renown you won then endures to this day, we have sinned, we have done wrong. Lord, by all your acts of justice turn away your anger and your fury from Jerusalem, your own city, your holy mountain" (Daniel 9:14-16).
"You performed signs and wonders in the land of Egypt and do the same today, in Israel and among mankind. You have won the renown that is yours today. You brought your people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs and wonders, with mighty hand and outstretched arm and fearsome terror; then you gave them this land which you promised an oath to their ancestors, a land where milk and honey flow; and in due course they entered it and took possession. But they would not listen to your voice or follow your Law: they would do nothing you ordered them to do; and so you made all these disasters happen to them. See how the earthworks grow nearer to the city for the assault! Sword, famine, and plague will deliver the city into the hands of the attacking Chaldeans" (Jeremiah 32:20-24).
Thus the first seven weeks (49 years) would elapse between the destruction of Jerusalem and the coming of an "annointed Prince" which has been interpreted to be either Cyrus (on the basis of Isaiah 45:1) or more likely, considering the role of Darius the Mede in Daniel and the emphasis on the priesthood in 9:26 (where the high priest is called the "anointed one") and 11:22 (where the same individual is called the "prince of the covenant"), Jeshua the first high priest after the exile (cf. Ezra 2:2, 4:3; Zechariah 3:1-9). This would give about 49 years for the exile (with the 50th year as a Jubilee of return), a concept derived again from Leviticus: "You are to count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, that is to say a period of seven weks of years, forty-nine years...You will declare the fiftieth year sacred and proclaim the liberation of all the inhabitants of the land. This is to be a jubilee for you; each of you will return to his ancestral home, each to his own clan" (25:8-10). This is almost exactly the historical length of the exile between 587/6 BC and 539/8 BC. The division into an initial "seven weeks of years" is surely meant to evoke this Levitical period.
Then following the first 49 years, there is a long interval (62 weeks of years) during which "squares and ramparts" will be "restored and rebuilt", and indeed both the restoration of the Temple (in 520-515 BC) and the city walls (in 445-443 BC) occur during this period. It is also a "time of trouble", as ch. 11 of Daniel discusses in detail, filled with the wars and conflicts of the Persians and Greeks, followed with the wars between the Ptolemies and Seleucids. As it turns out, the author of Daniel overestimated the length of this period, as there was no standard chronology of the Persian period (unlike that of the Seleucid era), and similar errors were made by Josephus (Antiquities 13.11.1, 20.10) and Demetrius (Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 1.21.141). The final week (7 years), as the accompanying visions and interpretations establish, began in the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, with the assassination of high priest Onias III ("after the 62 weeks an annointed one will be cut off", 9:26; compare the same event in 11:22, 2 Maccabees 4:33-35 and 1 Enoch 90:8) in 171 BC. Then in the "midst" of this final week, Antiochus attacks Jerusalem and the Temple and "for the space of one half-week he will put a stop to sacrifice and oblation and in its stead will be the abomination of desolation", a clear reference to the attack on Jerusalem and the instalation of a heathen altar in the Temple in 168 BC, which was removed three years later in 165-164 BC.
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scholar
Leolaia
Because of your cultish poztate mindset you only see what you want to see. The section in the new Isaiah commentary contains three paragraphs which discuss the seventy years of Tyre. These are Tyre's seventy years only which as a period of servitude to Babylon was fulfillled at the same time that the seventy years of Judah at Babylon. Tyre's seventy years ended when Babylon fell in 539 and in agreement with Jeremiah 25 was included as one of the nations who served Babylon. So this is not new light but simply a discussion of the seventy years of Tyre.for in this case Tyre did not serve Bavylon for an exact period of seventy years as the writer comments:'Different nations came under that domination under different times. But at the end of 70 years, that domination will crumble.'
scholar JW
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jeanniebeanz
Because of your cultish poztate mindset you only see what you want to see.
Dying....<gasp> ....Can't.....Stop......Laughing..... Please send help.....hahahahahahahaha.....
Oh, Gawd, Scholar.... I swear you make my day on so many occasions.... Please do not ever leave us...
Jeannie
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ellderwho
Wow this thread is still going,
Hey Scholar ever get around to that "neo-kings" list. Then you can silence all these poztates.
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EvilForce
He's truly delusional....I'd love to have some of whatever he's on.
LOL
Evil Force - Of the won't believe the postulate until you show your math with proof class