The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

476 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
been kept in the versions later made in that tradition, such as the RSV of 1952
and the NASB of 1977. By the way, on page 86 RF says that the LXX ‘has the
dative form babulôni, the most natural meaning being “at Babylon”.’ Now, the
Greek form is correct, but the sense is not, for in Greek the dative used here is
the dativus commodi et incommodi. (Also called ‘the dative of advantage and
disadvantage’, cf. C.F.D.Moule, An Idiom-Book of New Testament Greek, 2nd ed.,
Cambridge U.P., 1971, p. 46) See W.W. Goodwin, A Greek Grammar, London
et al, 1970, pp. 247ff., § 1165, which says: ‘This dative is generally introduced in
English by ‘for’.” This is of great importance, as may be seen from the
statement by F.C. Conybeare and St. G. Stock in A Grammar of Septuagint Greek
(Grand Rapids 1980) § 38, in which they discuss the peculiar syntax of the
LXX:
The Construction of the LXX not Greek. ... the LXX is on the whole a literal
translation, it is to say, it is only half a translation – the vocabulary has been
changed, but seldom the construction. We have therefore to deal with a
work of which the vocabulary is Greek and the syntax Hebrew.
Apparently, then, the translators of the LXX understood the phrase lebabhel
correctly and so rendered it in the best possible way into a Greek form having
exactly the same sense as the original Hebrew, i.e. ‘for Babylon.’ Why Jerome
didn’t imitate this fine effort when making the Vulgate is not known, but in
connection with his ‘in Babylone’ and KJV’s ‘at Babylon’ we ought to realize
that such a rendering does not in any way ‘prove’ RF’s contentions about the
length of the exile and Jerusalem’s devastation: We know from Jeremiah 25:11
that ‘these nations [i.e., ‘these nations all around’, the ones defined so clearly in
Jeremiah 25:17-26] shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years’, and these
seventy years would naturally pass for all and sundry, whether ‘in’ or ‘at’
Babylon or elsewhere. Mark you, neither this scripture nor anyone else says ‘for
Judah’ or ‘for ‘Israel’ or for ‘the exiles’! So, even though RF and his fellow
believers stubbornly stick to their erroneous interpretation of the inspired
words of Jehovah spoken by Jeremiah, they have no solid evidence for their
ideas!
In the case of the sense of le in Jeremiah 29:10 we have the clear evidence
outlined in a work which RF does not mention, namely Professor Ernst Jenni’s
Die hebräischen Präpositionen. Band 3: Die Präposition Lamed (Stuttgart et al, 2000).
In this monumental work Dr. Jenni lists and categorizes each and every
occurrence of le in the entire Hebrew Bible, all 20,725 of them! Here we find le
as used in Jeremiah 29:10 (in lebabhel) on page 109, ‘Rubrik’ 4363, where it is
listed with a few other scriptures in which some forms of the verb ml’ [mal’e],
‘voll werden (Tage/Jahr[e])’, ‘(to become full, complete, (days/year[s])’ occur;
it is listed as a subgroup under 436, ‘Dauer’ (‘duration’). Thus the verbal lemall’ot
in 2 Chronicles 36:21 means, as shown earlier, ‘to complete fully’ and the verbal
melo’t ‘to be completed’ (qal infinitive construct) in Jeremiah 29:10, while the
direct object lebabhel means ‘for Babylon’: this corresponds to Dr. Driver’s
definition 5. g. (b), where le is said to be ‘corresponding to the Latin dativus
commodi’, with the general meaning ‘for’, and that brings us back to the LXXrendering
mentioned above with the ‘dativus commodi’ Babulôni, giving exactly
the same meaning. In his ‘argumentation’ RF referred to some other scriptures