The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

The Seventy Years for Babylon 197
edition of the New World Translation (1971 ed.), automatically
describes the seventy years as “70 years’ servitude due.” 9
Yet, in their discussions of this text, Watchtower writers never
point out that Jeremiah spoke of seventy years of servitude, or that
this servitude related to the nations surrounding Judah. They try always
to give the impression that the seventy years referred to Judah, and
Judah only, and they always describe the seventy years as a period
in which Judah suffered complete desolation, “without an inhabitant.” 10
This they reckon as having happened from the destruction of
Jerusalem and its temple. But their application is in direct conflict
with the exact wording of Jeremiah’s prediction, and it can be
upheld only by ignoring what the text actually says.
”Servitude” here should not be taken to mean the same thing as
desolation and exile. For the nations surrounding Judah the
9 As the attention was drawn to this heading in the original version of the present
work (sent to the Watchtower headquarters in 1977), and also in the published
edition of 1983, it was no surprise to find that it had been changed in the 1984
large-print edition of NW. The heading (p. 965) now reads: “70 years’ exile due.”
10 The Hebrew word for “desolation,” chorbáh is also used in verse 18, where
Jerusalem and the cities of Judah are stated to become “a desolation (chorbáh), . . .
as it is today.” As Dr. J. A. Thompson remarks, “The phrase as it is today suggests
that at the time of writing some aspects of this judgment, at 1east, were apparent.”
(The Book of Jeremiah, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980, p. 516) The prophecy was
uttered and written down in the fourth year of Jehoiakim . . . that is, the first year
of Nebuchadnezzar.” (Jer. 25:1; 36:1–4) But as that scroll was burned by
Jehoiakim some months later, in the ninth month of his fifth year (36:9–25),
another scroll had to be written. (36:32) At that time Nebuchadnezzar’s armies had
already invaded and ravaged the land of Judah. At the time of writing, therefore,
the phrase “as it is today” was probably added as a result of this desolation.
That the word chorbáh does not necessarily imply a state of total desolation
“without an inhabitant” can be seen from other texts which use the word, for
example Ezekiel 33:24, 27 (”the inhabitants of these devastated places”) and at
Nehemiah 2:17. During Nehemiah’s time Jerusalem was inhabited, yet the city is
said to be “devastated (chorbáh).” The phrase “desolate waste, without an
inhabitant” is found at Jeremiah 9:11 and 34:22. Although it refers to Jerusalem
and the cities of Judah it is nowhere equated with the period of seventy years. As
pointed out by Professor Arthur Jeffrey in the Interpreter’s Bible (Vol. 6, p. 485),
chorbáh is ‘often employed to describe the state of a devastated land after the
armies of an enemy have passed (Leviticus 26:31, 33; Isaiah 49:19; Jeremiah
44:22; Ezekiel 36:34; Malachi 1:4; 1 Maccabees 1:39).” It would not be inaccurate,
therefore, to talk of Judah as chorbáh eighteen years prior to its depopulation, if
the land had been ravaged by the army of an enemy at that time. Inscriptions from
Assyria and Babylonia show that, in order to break the power and morale of a
rebel quickly, the imperial army would try to ruin the economic potential “by
destroying unfortified settlements, cutting down plantations and devastating
fields” — Israel Eph’al, “On Warfare and Military Control in the Ancient Near
Eastern Empires,” in H. Tadmor & M. Weinfield (eds.), History, Historiography and
1nterpretatian (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1984), p. 97.