On pp. For instance, on pp. Exodus 21:2 is self-explanatory. Haman 'iggereth) allowing him to travel to Judea unhindered as he crossed borders, and to obtain timber for use in construction. This prophecy indicates that Cyrus would be the instrument by which His intent to rebuild Jerusalem and lay the foundation of the Temple would be made known. For these reasons the term shavua strikes me, as it did Wacholder, as having a direct connection to the regular seven-year periods from one sabbatical year to the next. , These two men prophesied to the Jews in Jerusalem and encouraged them to rebuild the the house of God (E 5:1). At that point, Nehemiah led the charge to reinforce the gates of the temple and to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, which took 49 years and equates to the first 7-week period. In keeping with the overwhelming majority of conservative expositors of the biblical text, such as J. Paul Tanner (Is Daniels Seventy-Weeks Prophecy Messianic? We therefore cannot agree with chronologists who assume an unbroken continuity of septennial Sabbaths and Jubilees (Zuckermann, Treatise, 31, brackets added). From this point forward, there would be another 434 years as Israel waited for the coming of the Messiah. The issuing of the decree and the start of the sevens counting are separate matters, though closely related. Ezra 4:16, 1012, 17, 21, 24: Now when the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the people of the exile were building a temple to the LORD God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers' households, and said to them, Let us build with you, for we, like you, seek your God; and we have been sacrificing to Him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria, who brought us up here. But Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the rest of the heads of fathers households of Israel said to them, You have nothing in common with us in building a house to our God; but we ourselves will together build to the LORD God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia has commanded us. Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah, and frightened them from building [the Temple], and hired counselors against them to frustrate their counsel all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia. . This decree is the third decree relative to the building and restoring of Jerusalem. Since no new decree was issued to facilitate the work of Nehemiah, only letters, the latters work starting in 444 BC should be understood as implementing what had already been permitted by Artaxerxes, yet not put into effect due to the people being cowed by continued Samaritan opposition. Artaxerxes was the second son of Xerxes, who was murdered in the summer of 465 by his all-powerful vizir Artaban. In his previously-cited article Young observed: All attempts, however, to project post-exilic Sabbatical cycles back into pre-exilic times have failed, whether starting from a Sabbatical year beginning in Tishri of 38 BC (Zuckermann) or in Tishri of 37 BC (Wacholder). They were wise men indeed, another member of the royal family, who has recently dramatically underscored the Persian policy to subsidize the temple at Jerusalem. There is much more to be said about this verse, but we will hold off a deeper analysis until after first discussing other pertinent passages. The ancient exegetes, it will be shown, understood shavua to refer to the seven-year cycle, the last year of which was the year of the Lord (Lev. The prophecy thus stipulates that, from the issuing of the correct decree, seven septennates49 years, as in a Jubilee cycle (Lev 25:8)plus an additional 62 septennates434 yearswould pass before an anointed one would come to the Jews. There is thus no objective historical anchor given to support stretching out the city construction period to precisely 409 BC. Given how clear Cyrus permission had been to rebuild the Temple, this complaint must have focused on something other than Temple construction. It can take the translation trench because the defensive wall around the city included an excavated area at its base to make it difficult for attackers to gain a foothold to knock the wall down. rchob) and moat (Heb. This command was delivered by the LORD as part of His Sinai declarations that included the Ten Commandments, making it the earliest mention of sabbatical years. Another matter which must be taken into consideration is that sabbatical years of the post-exilic period had to be reset when the Jews returned to the Land under Ezra. The result was the coming of Nebuchadnezzar and the exile of the people from the Land: 2 Chronicles 36:1923: Then they burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem, and burned all its fortified buildings with fire and destroyed all its valuable articles. Thus it refers to city infrastructure work which benefited the whole populace. Ezra 6:14: And the elders of the Jews were successful in building [the Temple] through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. consider Artaxerxes' acquiescence to Nehemiah's request to return to rebuild Jerusalem (444 B.C., Neh. Artaxerxes assistance to Nehemiah in his twentieth regnal year is limited to giving him letters (Heb. When these several Scriptures are considered together, they inform us that from Gods perspective, Cyrus was His instrument to initiate the rebuilding of both the Temple and the city of Jerusalem. However, starting from the date of this incident throws the 70-weeks prophecy way off It can only be said to be Artaxerxes in an indirect and oblique sense. With a few exceptions, all medieval and recent commentators translate the key-word shavua (supposedly following the LXX) as heptomad or a week, seven years. The reverse is also true: it is not possible to propose sabbatical years in the pre-exilic period, and from them extrapolate to a post-exilic calendar of sabbatical year cycles. Ezra goes up to Jerusalem 11. to interpret them. Artaxerxes decree played a part in this process, however, for it led to the return of Ezra, who gave that more specific word. qowl, voice] throughout his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying, Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and He has appointed me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. To dispel this false notion, we need to read the text of Nehemiah carefully and look at what tools Artaxerxes placed at Nehemiahs disposal to accomplish his task: And I [Nehemiah] said to the king, If it please the king, let letters be given me for the governors of the provinces beyond the River, that they may allow me to pass through until I come to Judah, and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress which is by the temple, for the wall of the city and for the house to which I will go. And the king granted them to me because the good hand of my God was on me. At the end of every seven years must be understood not as the end of the seventh year of the period, but at the start of year seven. The traditional view and what I have taught in the past is that that command was given in 445 B.C. King Artaxerxes gave this decree in 444 BC. In 460 BC, Inaros II revolted against the Persians with the help of his Athenian allies, and defeated the Persian army commanded by satrap Akheimenes. We must keep the important role of Artaxerxes clearly in mind. Daniel 9:25 continues: "from the issuing of a decree THE TIME OF CHRIST. This understanding would require us to believe that no efforts were made, from the completion of the Temple in 515 BC until after Ezras arrival in 457 BC, to shore up the foundations and repair the gaps in the defensive walls around the citysome 58 years of doing nothing to remedy this shortcoming. The passage in Isaiah 1:26 is a prophecy of what Ezra would do. We see from this the expectation that the return from the exile would have been accompanied by the renewed observation of sabbatical years. Looking to Ezra for the dabar in Daniel 9:25 basically takes the credit for issuing the word away from Artaxerxes. The principle of release at the beginning of year seven, not at its end, is also given by several Scriptures: Exodus 21:2: If you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years; but on the seventh he shall go out as a free man without payment., Deuteronomy 15:9, 12, 18: Beware that there is no base thought in your heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of remission, is near. Ezra and Nehemiah were leaders in the reign of Artaxerxes. During his reign, he halted the rebuilding of the Temple area that his predecessor Cyrus had allowed. Thus the going forth of the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem in Dan 9:25 was Ezras word, not the decree of Artaxerxes. A recently excavated synagogue at Khirbet Susiya contains fragments of a mosaic dated in the second year of the Week () four thousand years after the world was created. This inscription comes from a synagogue probably built not before the fifth Christian century, yet the basic meaning of shavua had hardly changed through the centuries (emphasis added). Shea, Supplementary Evidence in Support of 457 B.C., JATS 12.1, p. 94, online at http://archive.atsjats.org/JATS12.1-09Shea.pdf), and the passage does not reveal who issues this word. Read in the light of the other passages under discussion, however, it seems we should understand it as an official decree which goes farther than the original Temple-focused one issued by Cyrus. Ezra 7:1126, condensed: 11Now this is the copy of the decree which King Artaxerxes gave to Ezra the priest, the scribe13I have issued a decree that any of the people of Israel and their priests and the Levites in my kingdom who are willing to go to Jerusalem, may go with you. Is it possible to say so? Cyrus issued a decree that exiles should return and rebuild, just as Isaiah had prophesied two centuries earlier (Isaiah 44:28). This was Ezras calling. (Ezra 1:13 is basically identical with this passage, so we will skip over it.). Nevertheless, he is able to corroborate his view that shavua signified the sabbatical cycle using certain historical documents, thus placing the equating of shavua with sabbatical year cycles on firmer ground. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crop, but during the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath rest, a sabbath to the LORD; you shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard (emphasis added). We make that conclusion because we know that Artaxerxes began to reign in Persia in 464 . Deuteronomy 31:1012 reads: Then Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven years, at the time of the year of remission of debts, at the Feast of Booths, when all Israel comes to appear before the LORD your God at the place which He will choose, you shall read this law in front of all Israel in their hearing. dabar, usually rendered word] to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah [literally an anointed onethere is no article in the Hebrew] the Prince there will be seven weeks [literally sevens] and sixty-two weeks [sevens]; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. 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