Do the "seventy years" count from Jerusalems destruction or not?
Eggnogg: Yes.
This is false. According to the JWs, the 70 years lasted exactly 70 years to the month, not from Jerusalem's destruction. The Watchtower Society in its publication Let Your Kingdom Come and elsewhere confirms that the seventy-year period ended only upon the Jews’ return to Judah, and not before. According to the JWs it began months after Jerusalem fell. They arrive at October 537 when it supposedly began by counting back 70 years from the alleged return. If they counted from Jerusalem's destruction it would exceed 70 years and the land would obviouisly have been inhabited. The JWs write:
The 70 years expired when Cyrus the Great, in his first year, released the Jews and they returned to their homeland. (Chronicles 36:17 - 23)
The Bible prophecy does not allow for the application of the 70-year period to any time other than that between the desolation of Judah, accompanying Jerusalem's destruction, and the return of the Jewish exiles to their homeland as a result of Cyrus' decree," - Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, p. 463.
@AnnOMaly wrote:
The Bible actually says there were inhabitants living in Jerusalem's ruins after that time (Ezek. 33:21-24).
Eggnogg: No, it doesn't. You seem to be arguing just to be arguing with me, for none of the arguments you make here have any merit. Here's what the Bible does say about the desolated state of Jerusalem and the land of Judah:
You are very much mistaken in this regard also, and Anne is absolutely correct. There were in fact inhabitants in all that land that the JWs argue was 100 percent uninhabited.
The Hebrew word for ‘devastated’ or ‘devastations’ is chorbah. The Hebrew and Aramaic Dictionary of the Old Testament by Dr. James Strong (1890) defines ‘chorbah’ as: “a place laid waste, ruin, wasted, desolation.” And while it is agreed that the degree of devastation, or chorbah, was severe, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, according to Setting the Record Straight at p. 15, contend that Judah, and by extension Jerusalem, “would be devastated so as to be without an inhabitant,” and that the concept of Judah’s devastation, or chorbah, of Jeremiah 25:11 did not apply to its condition at any time before its destruction.
In support they quote Jeremiah 6:7-8, 9:11, 4:23, 25, 4:27, 29b, 24:8, 10, Isaiah 6:11, 12 and Jeremiah 44:2,6., all of which correctly state that Jerusalem and/or Judah would exist without an inhabitant, or something similar. But nowhere in those verses does it say the uninhabited state would last seventy years. More importantly, they omit key verses which prove that Judah and Jerusalem were in fact inhabited during that time, and that chorbah does not by definition mean a devastated place that cannot be inhabited, or that the era preceding Jerusalem’s destruction was not in a devastated condition.
First, in quoting the original prophecy handed down by Moses the Watchtower Society omitted Leviticus 26:32 which refutes their argument.
After describing the conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, 2 Chronicles 36:20, 21 states: “Furthermore, he carried off those remaining from the sword captive to Babylon, and they came
to be servants to him and his sons until the royalty of Persia began to reign; 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.””—Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, p. 463.
The reference to the land paying off its sabbaths is a direct reference to Leviticus 26:32-35 which also should have been brought to the readers' attention.
32 And I, for my part, will lay the land desolate, and YOUR enemies who are dwelling in it will simply stare in amazement over it. 33 And YOU I shall scatter among the nations, and I will unsheathe a sword after YOU; and YOUR land must become a desolation, and YOUR cities will become a desolate ruin.
34 “‘At that time the land will pay off its sabbaths all the days of its lying desolated, while YOU are in the land of YOUR enemies. At that time the land will keep sabbath, as it must repay its sabbaths. 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.
Verse 32 teaches us that people, in this case Judah’s enemies, would dwell in the land during its devastated condition. In biblical times this often occurred as a natural consequence. Devastated places (chorbah) can be inhabited, and were.
Secondly, Daniel himself considered Jerusalem to be inhabited even though it was in a devastated state, or chorbah. In the first year of Darius, right after Babylon fell to the Persians and Medes, Daniel understood the meaning of Jeremiah’s original prophecy at Jeremiah 25:11 to mean that the Jewish nightmare had come to an end with Babylon’s fall after seventy years of world domination. In accord with Jeremiah 29:12, he then engaged in prayer to Jehovah (while in Babylon and before the exiles returned to Judah) and it is in this prayer that Daniel refers to devastated Jerusalem as being inhabited.
7 To you, O Jehovah, there belongs the righteousness, but to us the shame of face as at this day, to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to all those of Israel, those nearby and those far away in all the lands to which you dispersed them because of their unfaithfulness with which they acted against you.
Third, in the book of the exiled prophet Ezekiel he reiterated Jehovah’s word which stated that the devastated places were inhabited.
23 And the word of Jehovah began to occur to me, saying: 24 “Son of man, the inhabitants of these devastated places are saying even concerning the soil of Israel, ‘Abraham happened to be just one and yet he took possession of the land. And we are many; to us the land has been given as something to possess.’
Even if, as the Jehovah’s Witnesses argue, these devastated areas did not become completely uninhabited until the remaining remnant of Judah fled to Egypt a while after Jerusalem’s destruction, that’s not the point. The point is, Jehovah himself referred to devastated Judah as being inhabited at that time.
Fourth, in his twenty-third year Nebuchadnezzar took 745 Jews into exile - that is, five years after Jerusalem’s destruction. The Jehovah’s Witnesses argue they may have come from one of the surrounding nations and could not have come from Judah, as it was uninhabited. However, it is more reasonable to conclude they came from Judah and very likely were of those Jews who fled to Egypt after Jerusalem was destroyed, and then fled back to Judah after Nebuchadnezzar razed Egypt and devoted most of the original contingent of Jews to the sword, pestilence and famine.
Briefly, after Jerusalem and Judah were destroyed, Nebuchadnezzar appointed Gedaliah as governor over the remaining inhabitants of the land who were warned by Jehovah not to flee to Egypt but remain in Judah. (Thus, Judah was inhabited after its destruction.) In time Ishmael killed Gedaliah and took Jewish captives from Mizpah to the sons of Ammon. They were subsequently rescued, returned to Judah, and despite warnings of dire consequences if they did, fled to Egypt under the mistaken belief that they would be safe from the Babylonian army (see Jeremiah chapters 40-44). Included in the fleeing remnant were other dispersed Jews who had returned to Judah, picked summer fruit, and then ran off to Egypt as well.
And there will come to be no escapee or survivor for the remnant of Judah who are entering in to reside there as aliens, in the land of Egypt, even to return to the land of Judah to which they are lifting up their soul[ful desire] to return in order to dwell; for they will not return except some escaped ones. (Jeremiah 44:14)
"And as for the ones escaping from the sword, they will return from the land of Egypt to the land of Judah few in number ...." (Jeremiah 44:28)
Since these escaped ones were being hunted down and chased by the sword it is highly unlikely they waited to return seventy years later at the advanced age of 80 or 90 after Cyrus issued his famous decree allowing the Jews to return home. So, even though devastated, a ruin, a waste etc., Judah was inhabited after its destruction. There is no sound scriptural reason for implying that the devastated place of Jeremiah 25:11 was without inhabitant.
Sixth, given the foregoing scriptural certainty, the phrase “a desolate waste, without inhabitant” or similar variant, was never meant to be taken literally. Yet even if it were meant to be taken literally the uninhabited condition could only have been for an initial period of time because Judah was re-inhabited after all. This phrase is therefore hyperbole, an intended exaggeration in order to make a point, such as “I waited for you an eternity.” The Bible is filled with Jehovah’s exaggerated statements in order to make a point of emphasis which is what “without inhabitant” is.
This hyperbolic statement does not mean, however, that it did not refer to Judah’s condition after Jerusalem’s destruction. It did. Stated another way, the phrase or notion that Judah would become a “devastated place, without inhabitant” or similar variant most surely in most instances refers to Judah after Jerusalem’s total annihilation. But that’s not the issue. The issue is whether the Jehovah’s Witnesses have a legitimate basis for inserting “without inhabitant” for “seventy years” into the “devastation” part or aspect of Jeremiah 25:11. They must do so in order to stretch Jerusalem’s destruction back to 607 B.C.E., and discount any countervailing argument that the devastation began before Jerusalem’s final destruction. If Jerusalem was in a devastated condition years before its ultimate demise, the Jehovah’s Witnesses' theory fails.
Accordingly, in order to prevail, the Jehovah’s Witnesses must a) legitimately inject “without an inhabitant” into the phrase “and all this land must become a devastated place, an object of astonishment” at Jeremiah 25:11, and b) they must establish that the devastated uninhabited condition lasted seventy years exactly, beginning with Jerusalem’s destruction, and not before. Neither task is scripturally feasible. To reiterate the question, was the foretold devastation of Jeremiah 25:11 limited to the most extreme condition that ensued following Jerusalem’s destruction or did it include the less extreme but significant devastation that Nebuchadnezzar wreaked on Judah during the preceding years he razed the country?
http://144000.110mb.com/607/index.html
