The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

234 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
New Bible Dictionary, J. D. Douglas (ed.), 2nd ed. (Leicester,
England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1982), p. 101.
”In 609, the Babylonians finally routed the Assyrians and began
the establishment of their control over Phoenicia, Syria and
Palestine.”—The Russian Assyriologist M. A. Dandamaev in History
of Humanity, Vol. III, ed. by J. Herrman & E. Zürcher (Paris,
London, New York: UNESCO, 1996), p. 117.
”In 609 Assyria was mentioned for the last time as a still existing
but marginal formation in northwestern Mesopotamia. After that
year Assyria ceased to exist.”—Stefan Zawadzki in The Fall of
Assyria (Poznan: Adam Mickiewicz University Press, 1988), p. 16.
Thus, the seventy years “for Babylon” may also be reckoned
from 609 B.C.E. From that year the Babylonian king regarded
himself as the legitimate successor of the king of Assyria, and in the
following years he gradually took over the control of the latter’s
territories, beginning with a series of campaigns in the Armenian
mountains north of Assyria.
The Egyptian Pharaoh, Necho, after the failed attempt to
recapture Harran in 609, succeeded in taking over the areas in the
west, including Palestine, for about four years, although his control
of these areas seems to have been rather general and loose. 56 But
the battle at Carchemish in 605 B.C.E. put an end to this brief
Egyptian presence in the west. (Jeremiah 46:2) After a series of
successful campaigns to “Hattu,” Nebuchadnezzar made it clear to
Necho that he was the real heir to the Assyrian Empire, and “never
again did the king of Egypt come out from his land, for the king of
Babylon had taken all that happened to belong to the king of Egypt
up to the river of Euphrates.”―2 Kings 24:7, NW. 57
If the Babylonian supremacy is reckoned from 609 B.C.E., the
year that marked the definite end of the Assyrian Empire, exactly
seventy years elapsed up to the fall of Babylon in 539 B .C.E. This
period may be counted as the “seventy years for Babylon.”
(Jeremiah 29:10) 58
As not all the nations previously ruled by Assyria were brought
under the Babylonian yoke in that same year, the “seventy years” of
servitude in reality came to mean a round number for individual
nations . 59
56 Compare 2 Kings 23:29–34; 2 Chronicles 35:20–36:4. On Necho’s “general, but
1oose” control of the areas in the west, see the comments by T. G. H. James in The
Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. III:2 (see note 23 above), p. 716.
57 Ross E. Winkle, too, concludes that “the defeat of Assyria is the obvious choice for
the actua1 beginning of the seventy years. This is because of the fact that with
Assyria out of the way, Babylon was truly the dominant power in the North.”—R.
E. Winkle,