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Seventy Years of Captivity

2 Chronicles 36:21

The chronicler makes it very clear who was responsible for the nation of Judah being taken to Babylon for 70 years of captivity: It was God (2 Chronicles 36:17). The Babylonian exile was the direct result of God calling the Babylonians from Mesopotamia to judge His sinful people. And the chronicler reminds the post-exilic community why they were there for 70 years: "To fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land enjoyed her Sabbaths. As long as she lay desolate she kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years" (2 Chronicles 36:21).

Working backwards in time from 2 Chronicles, we find the prophet Daniel in Persia (in 538 B.C.) making note of Jeremiah's "seventy years" (Daniel 9:1-2). It had been approximately 70 years since Daniel arrived in Babylon in 605 B.C. with the first wave of deportees from Jerusalem. Having a copy of Jeremiah's prophecy, he noted that Jeremiah prophesied a 70-year captivity for Judah (Jeremiah 25:11-12; 29:10) and he beseeched the Lord to accomplish their release and return (Daniel 9:3-19).

But why did Jeremiah prophesy a 70-year captivity? Because of his knowledge of Leviticus 25:2-7, the Sabbath-rest ordinance for the land. Every seventh year the land was to lie fallow and rest. God warned Israel if they did not keep that ordinance he would remove them from the land and enforce the Sabbath-rest law for the land (Leviticus 26:34-35, 43). Jeremiah knew it would take "70 years" of rest to accomplish God's judgment, and Daniel knew God's promise: If, when the people were in the land of their enemies, if they confessed their sin God would remember His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and restore them (Leviticus 26:40-45). So Daniel confessed the nation's sins and asked God for forgiveness and restoration. God answered by moving Cyrus, the Persian king, to release the captives to begin returning to Jerusalem in 538 B.C. (Ezra 1:1-4).

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