@Witness My Fury wrote:
Do the "seventy years" count from Jerusalems destruction or not?
@djeggnog wrote:
Yes.
@Witness My Fury wrote:
What does the bible actually say...?
@djeggnog wrote:
The Bible clearly does speak of 70 years of servitude to King Nebuchadnezzar, but Jewish servitude didn't begin until Nebuchadnezzar's seventh regnal year in 618 BC. (Jeremiah 25:11) More importantly though, it was during Nebuchadnezzar's 18th regnal year in 607 BC when Jerusalem was destroyed and Zedekiah, who had fled Jerusalem, was overtaken at Jericho, blinded and then led captive to Babylon.
The 587 BC advocates cannot reconcile 587 BC with 539 BC, because it isn't possible to find 70 years between 587 BC and 539 BC, for one would be 22 years shy of fulfilling those 70 years that God declared the land must lay desolate to pay off its sabbaths.
While Jeremiah 25:11 does speak of "these nations" being forced to serve King Nebuchadnezzar for "seventy years," it was not until 607 BC that Judah began to lie desolate just as Jehovah had foretold would occur by His prophet Jeremiah, some 11 years after the servitude of "these nations" in the Syria-Palestine region had already begun in 618 BC. It was only then -- in 607 BC -- that "the fulfilling of seventy years at Babylon" by the Jews began, during which "the land [would pay] off its sabbaths ... to fulfill seventy years." (Jeremiah 29:10; 2 Chronicles 36:21)
@Jonathan Dough wrote:
This is false. According to the JWs, the 70 years lasted exactly 70 years to the month, not from Jerusalem's destruction.
No, actually the 70 years would begin counting from the desolation of Judah. Solomon's temple was destroyed some two months before the desolation of Judah began, since Gedaliah had been appointed as governor in Judah in the fifth lunar month of Ab, only be assassinated two months later by Judean military chiefs in the seventh lunar month of Tishri, which caused the inhabitants of Judah to flee to Egypt along with Jeremiah and his secretary. It is then in this year -- 607 BC -- that Nebuzaradan, Nebuchadnezzar's chief of the bodyguard, went on to destroy Jerusalem and its temple.
Now earlier in this thread, I indicated how 2 Kings 25:8 states that it was after Gedaliah's assassination that Nebuchadnezzar's chief of the bodyguard Nebuzaradan destroys Jerusalem and his temple during Nebuchadnezzar's nineteenth year, when I had intended to say that this event occurred before his assassination. It was some two months after Zedekiah's first year in exile that Babylon began to exercise totalitarian control over the Promised Land that God had given to the nation of Israel back in 1473 BC as the dominant world power.
The Watchtower Society in its publication Let Your Kingdom Come....
I am not going to respond to statements that might have been published in older publications produced by the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society. As I stated in a previous message, this book you mention here was first published back in 1946 and then it was revised in 1952, and Jehovah's Witnesses do not recognize this book as containing information in it as reliable as the information found in our 21st century publications.
@AnnOMaly wrote:
The Bible actually says there were inhabitants living in Jerusalem's ruins after that time (Ezek. 33:21-24).
@djeggnog wrote:
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:
Jeremiah 33:10:
"'This is what Jehovah has said, ‘In this place that you people will be saying is waste without man and without domestic animal, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem that are desolated without man and without inhabitant and without domestic animal....''
2 Chronicles 36:20, 21:
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.
@Jonathan Dough:
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.
Ok.
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.
Why? Well, not the reference I made in this thread to "the fulfilling of seventy years at Babylon" by the Jews during which "the land [would pay] off its sabbaths ... to fulfill seventy years" didn't come from Leviticus 26:32-35, but to Jeremiah 29:10 and 2 Chronicles 36:21.
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.’
You are here quoting something from Ezekiel 33:23, 24, and you believe you understood what you were reading when you really do not. Jerusalem had not yet been destroyed when Ezekiel was given a prophecy from Jehovah as if what eventually did happen had already happened. Nebuchadnezzar had besieged Jerusalem for some 18 months before it finally fell to the Babylonians. You didn't quote Ezekiel 33:22, which states:
"Now the very hand of Jehovah had come to be upon me in the evening before the coming of the escaped one, and He proceeded to open my mouth prior to that one’s coming to me in the morning, and my mouth was opened and I proved to be speechless no longer."
This prophecy wasn't fulfilled until Ezekiel had received confirmation from the "escaped one" from Judah that Solomon's temple had been destroyed. Even so, despite the destruction of the temple, those "left over" (Ezekiel 34:18) as survivors in the land of Judah continued to eat unbled meat, still engaged in idolatry, still committed adultery, so they had no right to be in possession of the Land that God had given to Abraham and to his seed in which to live, which was the real point that you seemed to miss! (Ezekiel 33:25, 26) This is why the land of Judah was to become desolate with neither man nor animal living there for 70 years to pay off its sabbaths.
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.
Actually, I believe the Bible when it indicates that the land of Judah wasn't inhabited.
There is no sound scriptural reason for implying that the devastated place of Jeremiah 25:11 was without inhabitant.
What makes you say this? Is the Sovereign Lord Jehovah told his prophet Jeremiah that the land of Judah "must become a desolated place, an object of astonishment," and that nations like Egypt, Tyre, Moab and the Medes listed at Jeremiah 25:17-26, would have to drink from Jehovah's "cup" and "serve the king of Babylon seventy years," just as it states at Jeremiah 25:11, then I would consider this to be a very "sound scriptural reason" to conclude that the land of Judah became "a desolated place, an object of astonishment."
Sixth, given the foregoing scriptural certainty, the phrase "a desolate waste, without inhabitant" or similar variant, was never meant to be taken literally.
Is that how you see it? You may have your reasons to take Jeremiah's prophecy as being a figure of speech, but I take his prophecy to be literal. You can believe what you want to believe.
@PSacramento wrote:
607 has been beaten to death.
@djeggnog wrote:
It has? Ok.
@PSacramento wrote:
It has been shown over and over and over to be wrong.
@djeggnog wrote:
Ok.
@PSacramento wrote:
It has been shown via the bible, via history, via astronomy, via archeology.
@djeggnog wrote:
I may have referred to cuneiform tablets, but I have primarily referred to the Bible in making the case that the land of Judah began to pay off its sabbaths to fulfill 70 years in the year 607 BC.
@Jonathan Dough wrote:
You are actually weakening your case when you rely on Leviticus to prove that the land of Judah began to pay off its sabbaths to fulfill 70 years, and had you quoted the entire relevant verses instead of select portions you would clearly see that your theory actually disproves 70 years, an exact number to the month according to the WTBS, because it ended while the Jews were in Babylon, not when they supposedly returned. You fall one or two years short. This is a common trick used by the Jws with these verses.
What "common trick"? When did I make a case here about something contained in the Bible book of Leviticus? About what exactly was this "case" of mine?
I recall @AnnOMaly's making a reference to something in Leviticus, but I think you might be conflating my comments here with something you may have read in Setting the Record Straight, which you have characterized as being a recitation of de facto doctrines believed by Jehovah's Witnesses. I have told you and Im telling you again that "just because someone claims to be one of Jehovah's Witnesses does not mean that what that individual says accords with our viewpoint."
@djeggnog