Fisherman:
2 Chronicles 36:20,21 — 20 He carried off captive to Babylon those who escaped the sword, and they became servants to him and his sons until the kingdom of Persia began to reign, 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.
It is not that complicated.
🤦♂️ The inserted phrase “until the land had paid off its sabbaths. All the days it lay desolate it kept sabbath,” isn’t “the word spoken by Jeremiah” at all, it is from Leviticus 26:34–35.
But what this passage does say is that the Jews served Babylon for 70 years “until the kingdom of Persia began to reign”, which was quite definitely in 539 BCE, and began when Babylon replaced Assyria in 609 BCE. All the nations ‘served Babylon’ for 70 years, but they didn’t all go into exile, and submitting to Babylon during its 70 years was explicitly the way to avoid exile (Jeremiah 27:8-11).
The parenthetical statement from Leviticus adds that the land was also desolate while the land paid its sabbaths, but Leviticus 25:8 associates this separate period with 49 years, not 70. This was from Jerusalem’s destruction in 587 BCE until some of the Jews returned in 538 BCE.
It’s really not that complicated, but it is quite dishonest to falsely attribute statements to Jeremiah that are actually from Leviticus.