The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

224 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
to return to their homeland, it is more natural to understand his
reference to Jeremiah’s prophecy as a reference to what the
prophet said immediately after his prediction of the seventy years
“for Babylon” at Jeremiah 29:10:
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.’ — Jeremiah 29:10, NASB.
Note that the prophet did not say that Jehovah first would visit
the exiles, causing them to return to Jerusalem, and that as a result of
that the seventy years would be accomplished. This is how the
Watch Tower Society applies this prophecy. To the contrary, the
prophet clearly states that the seventy years would be accomplished
first, and after their fulfillment Jehovah would visit the exiles and
cause them to return to Jerusalem. The seventy years, then, would be
fulfilled while the Jewish exiles were still in Babylon!
And so it happened: Babylon fell to Cyrus, the king of Persia, in
October, 539 B.C.E., thus fulfilling the prophecy of the seventy
years “for Babylon.” The next year Cyrus issued his decree,
allowing the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem. 38 The end of the
seventy years at the fall of Babylon, and the return of the Jews one
year later are two separate events, and it is the last of these that
Ezra is speaking of at 2 Chronicles 36:22–23. His reference to the
word “by the mouth of Jeremiah” in these verses, then, must be a
reference to the second half of verse 10 in chapter 29 of the book
of Jeremiah.
Thus we find that 2 Chronicles 36:20–23, like Daniel 9:2, may be
brought into harmony with the prophecy of Jeremiah on the
seventy years. The Chronicler ends the period while the Jewish
exiles were stil1 living in Babylonia, when “the royalty of Persia
began to reign” in 539 B.C.E. He lays stress upon the fact that the
Jewish exiles could not return to Jerusalem until Babylon’s seventy
years had been fulfilled, and the land had paid off its sabbaths.
After that Jehovah caused them to return to their homeland, in
fulfillment of Jeremiah 29:10b, in the first year of Cyrus. The words
of the Chronicler, correctly understood, cannot be taken to mean
that the desolation of Judah after the destruction of Jerusalem and
its temple lasted for seventy years.
38 As argued earlier (chapter 3 above, note 2), the Jewish remnant most probably
returned from the exile in 538 B.C.E., not in 537 as the Watch Tower Society
insists.