D.
God’s unfolding timetable for the restoration of Judah: 70 years.
The Divinely-appointed length of the
Babylonian Captivity: 70 years! For this reason, Babylon’s destiny was sealed
and its days were numbered (Dan. 5:25-28). As Dan 2:21a states: “He
changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings…” God is
sovereign over all times and seasons, and sovereign over all changes and
revolutions in states and kingdoms.
o
As
chapter 5 opens (Oct. 12, 539 BC), the 70 years of the appointed Captivity—commencing
with Nebuchadnezzar’s first incursion into the Promised Land (605 BC)—were
swiftly approaching their completion. As the Handwriting on the Wall in this
chapter will indicate, Babylon’s predicted downfall was immediately at hand.
Dan. 5:26: “'MENE'--God has numbered your kingdom and put an end to it.”
o While the Exile had
been elsewhere predicted by earlier prophets, it was left to Jeremiah, in the
25th chapter of his prophecy, to first reveal the precise
length of Israel’s absence from the Land.
Jer. 25:8-13: 8"Therefore thus
says the LORD of hosts, 'Because you have not obeyed My words, 9behold,
I will send and take all the families of the north,' declares the LORD, 'and I
will send to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, My servant, and will bring them
against this land and against its inhabitants and against all these nations
round about; and I will utterly destroy them and make them a horror and a
hissing, and an everlasting desolation. 10'Moreover, I will take
from them the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the
bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones and the
light of the lamp. 11'This whole land will be a desolation and a
horror, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years. 12'Then
it will be when seventy years are completed I will punish the king of
Babylon and that nation,' declares the LORD, 'for their iniquity, and the land
of the Chaldeans; and I will make it an everlasting desolation. 13'I
will bring upon that land all My words which I have pronounced against it, all
that is written in this book which Jeremiah has prophesied against all the
nations.’”
o In a letter written unto
the exiles of Judah (ch. 29), Jeremiah advised them to get comfortable and establish
roots in Babylon… for they would be there quite awhile! But after the
appointed 70 years, God would remember them and lift His hand of judgment,
restoring them to their own land.
Jer. 29:10-11: "For thus says the LORD,
'When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you
and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place. 'For I know
the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for welfare and not
for calamity to give you a future and a hope.’”
o As a profound student
of the Scriptures in general, and of predictive prophecy in specific, Daniel
knew the times in which he was living…
Dan. 9:2: “…in the first year of his [i.e., Darius the Mede’s] reign,
I, Daniel, observed in the books the number of the years which was revealed as
the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet for the completion of the
desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.”
o The Chronicler reveals
God’s design in establishing the precise length of the Exile:
2 Chron. 36:17-21: 17Therefore He brought
up against them the king of the Chaldeans who slew their young men with the
sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or
virgin, old man or infirm; He gave them all into his hand. 18All the
articles of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house
of the LORD, and the treasures of the king and of his officers, he brought them
all to Babylon. 19Then they burned the house of God and broke down
the wall of Jerusalem, and burned all its fortified buildings with fire and
destroyed all its valuable articles. 20Those who had escaped from
the sword he carried away to Babylon; and they were servants to him and to his
sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, 21to fulfill the word
of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its
sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it kept sabbath until seventy years
were complete.
The enormous catalogue of Israel’s sins, which
brought them to the point-of-no-remedy (2 Chron. 36:16), and which initiated
the Covenant Curses of the Mosaic Law (including, ultimately, expulsion from
the Promised Land; cf., Lev. 18:26-28, 20:22, 26;33, Deut. 28:36, etc.), was
vast indeed—including the shedding of much innocent blood in the days of
Manasseh, King of Judah (2 Kings 24:3-4).
The specific violation of the Sabbath Year
throughout through 490 years of its history, however, when the Land was to lie
fallow every 7th Year and the nation was simply to trust in God’s gracious
provision, was the reason attributed to the precise length of the Captivity.
Lev. 25:2-7: “Speak to the
people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you,
the land shall keep a Sabbath to the LORD. For six years you shall sow your
field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its
fruits, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the
land, a Sabbath to the LORD. You shall not sow your field or prune your
vineyard. You shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather
the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the
land. The Sabbath of the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for
your male and female slaves and for your hired worker and the sojourner who
lives with you, and for your cattle and for the wild animals that are in your
land: all its yield shall be for food.
Violation of this law was attended by a
prescribed penalty:
Lev. 26:33-35: And I will
scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you, and
your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste. Then the
land shall enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in
your enemies' land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its Sabbaths. As long
as it lies desolate it shall have rest, the rest that it did not have on your
Sabbaths when you were dwelling in it.”
The 70 occasions in which the Sabbath Year
failed to be observed over a period of some 490 years of Israelite History thus
resulted in precisely 70 years of Exile in Babylon, in which the Land would
finally observe the 70 Sabbaths that it had been denied.
Failure to trust in the Lord is a grievous
sin indeed, in that it calls into question both His power and His very
integrity!
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