The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

474 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
Hebrew, and who admittedly made many mistakes. Regarding the Old Ethiopic,
which RF also favours, it is an even weaker witness; no one knows when it was
made but apparently it took centuries to complete, and the oldest manuscripts
are rather late, no earlier than the 13th century CE. Moreover, it is to a great
degree influenced by the LXX, and it cannot really be regarded as an
independent witness. After all, Jeremiah was an inspired prophet and his
original prophecies taken down in Hebrew and preserved in that language to
this very day are the best evidence we have about these matters. The Hebrew
text is also supported by the ancient Semitic translations, the Aramaic Targum
Jonathan and the Syriac Peshitta, which are much closer to the original Hebrew
than the Greek LXX.
Jeremiah 29:10
However, there is one more scripture mentioning the seventy years, the short
verse here mentioned, and to this RF now turns (page 85), apparently hoping
that he can finally prove his point. However, it is as though the long and hard
uphill battle has taken his breath away, for he offers neither transliteration nor
translation; instead he again focuses on a tiny particle, the preposition le
prefixed to the word babhel, which he feels has been wrongly rendered by the
standard translations. Let us just take a look at the verse in question,
transliterating and translating it for the benefit of the reader:
‘amar YHWH ki lephi mel’ot lebabhel shibhim shanah
for-this says Jehovah when
10 kikhoh
by-mymouth
to-becompleted
for-
Babel
seventy year(s)
‘ephqo
d
‘etkhe
m
vehaqimo
ti
you and-I-will
fulfill
hattob lechasi ‘etkhe
h r m
‘alhammaqo
m
I-willvisit
‘aleikhe ‘etdebhar
m
i
to-you myword
the-
good-
(one)
you
to-the
place
hazze
h
toreturn
thisone
Among the many modern translations the NIV gives a good and adequate
rendering, but the NWT fails in one point and that is the one that RF wants,
for it renders lebabhel ‘at Babylon’, as against NIV’s ‘for Babylon’. Let’s recall
that Dr. Driver, who wrote all the articles on the prepositions in Brown-Driver-
Briggs, also translated the Book of Jeremiah into reasonably modern English (in
1906); here is his version of Jeremiah 29:10 (emphasis added):
10 For thus saith Yahweh, As soon as seventy years be accomplished for
Babylon, I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in bringing
you back unto this place.
Moreover, he placed an interesting subtitle over this section in the 29th chapter,
showing how he understood this important scripture; it goes like this: