The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

226 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
E-1: Denunciation for seventy years or ninety?
According to the angel, Jehovah had denounced Jerusalem and the
cities of Judah for seventy years. The Watch Tower Society applies
these seventy years of denouncement (”indignation,” KJV, ASV;
“wrath,” NEB) to the period 607–537 B.C.E., thus equating them
with the seventy years of Jeremiah 25:10–12 and 29:10. 41 It seems
evident, though, that the reason why the angel put this question
about the denouncement was that Jehovah still, in Darius’ second
year (519 B.C.E.), had not shown mercy to the cities of Judah. Or
did the angel mean to say that Jehovah had denounced Jerusalem
and the cities of Judah for seventy years up to 537 B.C.E., and then
continued to be hostile against them for about eighteen more years
up to 519? This would make the period of hostility nearly ninety
years, not seventy. 42
But the “indignation” or “wrath” clearly refers to the devastated
state of the cities of Judah, including Jerusalem and its temple,
which began after the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.E. This
condition was still prevailing, as may be seen from Jehovah’s
answer to the angel’s question:
Therefore this is what Jehovah has said, “I shall certainly return
to Jerusalem with mercies. My own house will be built in her,” is
the utterance of Jehovah of armies, “and a measuring line itself will
be stretched out over Jerusalem.”
Call out further, saying, “This is what Jehovah of armies has
said: ‘My cities will yet overflow with goodness; and Jehovah will
yet certainly feel regrets over Zion and yet actually choose
Jerusalem.’ “ —Zechariah 1:16–17, NW.
41 Paradise Restored to Mankind—by Theocracy!, pp. 131–134.
42 The Watch Tower Society attempts to explain this contradiction by arguing that
Jehovah had denounced the cities of Judah for 70 years up to 537 B.C.E., but
allowed the Gentile nations to carry on the denunciation up to the time of
Zechariah, making it seem as if he was still denouncing the cities of Judah! —Ibid.,
pp. 131–34.
Also from a grammatical point of view it is difficult to uphold the idea that the
seventy years here refer to a period that had ended many years in the past. The
demonstrative pronoun “these” (Hebr. zeh) denotes something near in time or
space. Commenting on the expression “these seventy years” at Zech. 1:12, the
Swedish Hebraist Dr. Seth Erlandsson explains: “Literally it says ‘these 70 years,’
also at 7:5, which is tantamount to ‘now for 70 years.’ “ (Letter Erlandsson-
Jonsson, dated Dec. 23, 1990.) This is evidently the reason why Professor Hinckley
G. Mitchell renders the phrase as “now seventy years” in both texts.—H. G.
Mitchell in S. R. Driver, A. Plummer, & C. A. Briggs (eds.), The International Critical
Commentary. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi
and Jonah (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1912), pp. 123–24, 199–200.