The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

462 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
2 Chronicles 36:21
Going on to this scripture (pp.78-80), RF transliterates-cum-translates the
Hebrew in the same imperfect way as before, quoting the quite imprecise NWT
to boot; indeed, if he had used the more recent NIV he might have imparted a
better understanding to his readers. For the sake of completeness we may begin
with verse 20 which gives us the necessary background knowledge (NIV):
He [Nebuchadnezzar] carried into exile to Babylon the remnant who
escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and his sons
until the Kingdom of Persia came to power.
Now, in this there is no mention of the number of years that this exile was to
last, neither is its beginning dated; however, as to the latter point it is clearly
shown that it would only begin after the putting of the enemies in the city to
the sword, which happened in 587 BCE; and as to the former point we learn
that it would end when Persia took over from Babylon, that is, in 539 BCE.
This is in full agreement with Jeremiah’s statement, and does in no way
contradict his inspired prophecy.
Then, in verse 21, the Chronicler introduces a new element of which Jeremiah
had said nothing, namely that during the exile of the Jews the land had enjoyed
its rest as had been prophesied long ago in Leviticus 26:15-35; also, he points
out that this would last until it had ‘paid off its sabbaths’. As the law of God
stated in Leviticus 25, each seventh year was a sabbath year of rest during
which the land was to lie fallow, and each fiftieth year was to be a Jubilee year
of liberty in which the land should also remain fallow. However, Jeremiah never
referred to these parts of the law with a single word, a fact to be kept in mind
when dealing with verse 21, especially the latter part of it:
The land enjoyed its sabbath rests; all the time of its desolations it rested,
until the seventy years were completed in fulfilment of the word of the
LORD spoken to Jeremiah.
Please note that the text does not say, ‘all the seventy years for Babylon it rested’,
which would have been erroneous; what it does say is that the land ‘rested’ until
the seventy years mentioned by Jeremiah (‘for Babylon’) ‘were completed’ - and
since Jeremiah never mentioned the sabbath rest in any of his prophecies, the
part of verse 21 dealing with that cannot be included in the reference to ‘the
word of the LORD spoken to Jeremiah’! The only part to be included in this
reference is the one about the ‘seventy years’ allotted to or ‘for Babylon’, during
which ‘these nations’ (defined in 25:9 as ‘all these nations round about’ of
which there is an extensive list in 25:17-26) were to serve the kings of the then
world power. Consequently, the ‘exposition’ made by RF is patently false as far
as the Chronicler’s understanding of Jeremiah’s prophecy is concerned.
How about the accents?
Then, on page 79 RF directs our attention to the fact that in the Masoretic text
certain accents are used to mark the middle of verse 21, dividing it into two
sentences (better, ‘clauses’) and then also to mark the middle of each of these
two parts. Now, this is quite correct - for a fact, there are no less than fourteen
accent marks in this verse, although they do not all have the same significance.