Lately, I have been doing some work with the Book of Ezra, which begins with Cyrus’ decree that was issued, “that the word of Jehovah by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished” (Ezra 1:1). Ezra does not actually quote Jeremiah, but assumes that the reader is biblically literate. The work that I am doing will explore the biblical issues further, but as I studied for that project, I came across some archaeological items that are worth discussing here.
Several commentators (myself included) see two 70-year periods. I would say that the first seventy years are described in Jeremiah 25:
And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith Jehovah, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans; and I will make it desolate for ever. (Jer. 25:11–12)
So, when did this period begin and end? Some fine theologians would say that it ended when the foundation of the temple was laid “in the second year of their coming unto the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month” (Ezra 3:8). Other theologians (myself included) would say that it ended with the decree itself, so “that the word of Jehovah by the mouth of Jeremiah” was “accomplished” in Ezra 1:1 (cf. 2 Chron. 36:22). My calculations would put the Gregorian dates around 606–538 BC.
So, here are four objects that help us discern the chronology.
Object #1: The 360-Day Calendar in the Tel el-Farʿah Plaque
Jeremiah said that the desolation of the land would last 70 years. This may seem like a silly question, but how long is 70 years? Today, we tend to think of a year as 365 days with every fourth year lasting 366 days,1 but this is not how people always measured time. For example, Ancient Egypt had a 365-day civil calendar without a leap year, so it would drift by one day every four years, leading to the 1,461-year Sothic Cycle. Babylon had a 360-day calendar, so it would wander by about 5 days every year as compared to Egyptian calendar. The Mayans had a 260-day calendar and in addition to a 365-day calendar. Even today, the Eastern Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar, which is currently 2 weeks behind the Western Gregorian calendar.
In the days of Jeremiah, Israel had a religious calendar and a civil calendar. The religious calendar had the 7-day week as a basic unit of time, but the civil calendar divided the month into three decads of ten days each. One civil year would be 360 days (twelve 30-day months). The civil calendar was convenient for measuring long-term civil contracts, but since it didn’t have any leap days or months, it would drift by 5.2425 days every year relative to a solar calendar. Over the course of 70 civil years, the calendar would lose a whole solar year; over the course of 490 civil years, the calendar loses 7 solar years (this is important in calculating the Daniel 9 prophecy of the coming Messiah!).2
The first object in our current discussion is the Tel el-Farʿah plaque, named after the town of Tel el-Farʿah, Israel where it was found. It seems to be a civil month calendar with three columns of ten holes. We think that this plaque would be used as a calendar to measure the days by moving a peg to a new hole every day. This would attest to three 10-day decads in a 30-day month. Then there would be 12 months in a 360-day cycle.
Jeremiah’s 70-year period lasted a bit less than 69 solar years. Next, we will ask where we end up if we back up 69 years from Cyrus’ first year, which is when he issued his decree.
Object #2: 70 Years from Nebuchadnezzar to Cyrus in Lunar Eclipse Tablet 1419
In addition to the civil calendar, two other measurements of time in antiquity are the regnal year and the saros.
The regnal year begins the day that a king ascends to the throne. For example, Nebuchadnezzar’s coronation was on the first day of the month of Elul (during our month of August), so Elul 1 became the regnal new year for the rest of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, even though the lunar new year was not until Nisan 1. Regnal years start at different times, so we get some interesting correlations when we align them. Suppose there were two other kings, we will call them Cooter and Bubba (the two least Babylonian names I could think of). Cooter became king one year and two days before Nebuchadnezzar (on Ab 29), and Bubba became king four days after Cooter on Elul 3. Well, on Nebuchadnezzar’s second day in office (Elul 2), it would be year 2 for King Cooter and only year 1 for King Nebuchadnezzar and King Bubba, even though Cooter and Bubba have both been king for about a year and Nebuchadnezzar has only been king for a day. Confusing, right? So another way to measure time would be to measure by events in the sky that occur regardless of who is king. That brings us to the saros.
The saros is a period of 223 synodic months, which comes to 18 years, 11 days, and 8 hours (plus or minus one day depending on leap years). Lunar Eclipse Tablet 1419 records a series of saros cycles, so the dates of several kings can be astronomically fixed. An article in Answers Research Journal3 delineates the kings and regnal years that are written on this tablet along with their Gregorian conversions:
Nabopolassar 17th year — 609/8 BC
Nebuchadnezzar 14th year — 591/0 BC
Nebuchadnezzar 32nd year — 573/2 BC
Nabonidus 1st year — 555/4 BC
Cyrus 2nd year — 537/6 BC
Darius 3rd year — 519/8 BC
Darius 21st year — 501/0 BC
Xerxes 3rd year — 483/2 BC
Xerxes 21st year — 465/4 BC
Artaxerxes 11th year — 457/6 BC
Between Nebuchadnezzar’s 14th year and Cyrus’ 2nd year, there are 3 saros cycles, totaling to 54 years. So, Cyrus’ 1st year would have been 53 years after Nebuchadnezzar’s 14th year. Subtract 16 years, and we end up with Jeremiah’s prophetic period (70 civil years/~69 solar years) beginning two years before Nebuchadnezzar was king (Nabopolassar’s 20th year).
To see what was happening in the years before Nebuchadnezzar became king, we will consider the next two objects together, and see how they fit in the biblical narrative.
Object #3 & #4: Record of Nebuchadnezzar’s Conquest in Babylonian Chronicles (BM 22047 & BM 21946)
The Book of Daniel begins, “In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and besieged it” (Dan. 1:1). If someone only read this passage, he would probably think that Nebuchadnezzar became king during the Jehoiakim’s third year or earlier. However, in Jeremiah, we see “The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah (the same was the first year of Nebuchadrezzar4 king of Babylon,)” (Jer. 25:1). This would mean that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem the year before he became king. So, what do the Babylonian Chronicles say?
We have calculated that 70 civil years before Cyrus’ first year would have been the 20th year of Nabopolassar’s reign. The Babylonian Chronicles record the reign of Nabopolassar including his transition of power to Nebuchadnezzar in his final years. Chronicle 4 (BM 22047) shows that in Nabopolassar’s 19th year, Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar mustered their armies and went out to fight. The tablet ends in the 21st year, with Nabopolassar staying home as Nebuchadnezzar gathers his army. Chronicle 5 (BM 21946) picks up the story from there:
[The 21st year]: The king of Akkad stayed home (while) Nebuchadnezzar (II), his eldest son (and) the crown prince, mustered [the army of Akkad]. He took his army’s lead and marched to Carchemish which is on the bank of the Euphrates. He crossed the river [to encounter the army of Egypt] which was encamped at Carchemish. […] They did battle together. The army of Egypt retreated before him. He inflicted a [defeat] upon them (and) finished them off completely.
In the district of Hamath the army of Akkad overtook the remainder of the army of [Egypt which] managed to escape [from] the defeat and which was not overcome. They (the army of Akkad) inflicted a defeat upon them (so that) a single (Egyptian) man [did not return] home. At that time Nebuchadnezzar (II) conquered all of Ha[ma]th.
For twenty-one years Nabopolassar ruled Babylon. On the eighth day of the month Ab he died. In the month Elul Nebuchadnezzar (II) returned to Babylon and on the first day of the month Elul he ascended the royal throne in Babylon.5
Jeremiah mentions this war in passing as he begins a prophecy against Egypt:
Of Egypt: concerning the army of Pharaoh-neco king of Egypt, which was by the river Euphrates in Carchemish, which Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon smote in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah. (Jer. 46:2)
The 21st year of Nabopolassar only lasted 8 months (late November 606–July 605 BC). The 4th year of Jehoiakim would have been during Nabopolassar’s 21st year, but ended in Nebuchadnezzar’s first, which means that the siege on Jerusalem in Jehoiakim’s 3rd year most likely occurred in the 20th year of Nabopolassar (607–606 BC). Unfortunately for our purposes, the Babylonian Chronicles do not say anything about Nebuchadnezzar during Nabopolassar’s 20th year; the focus is on Nabopolassar himself, who, interestingly enough, waged war against Egypt in Syria (perhaps Nebuchadnezzar’s role in the war was omitted since there was already enough content to fill several lines of text). It is likely that while Nabopolassar fought in Syria, Nebuchadnezzar was pushing through Judah to cut off the Egyptian mainland from Carchemish and Hamath in the north, which he took the following year.
The Babylonian Chronicles record wars in the years before Nebuchadnezzar ascended the throne. Combining this with the Biblical references to the 3rd and 4th years of Jehoiakim, we end up with good reason to put the beginning of the 70 years at Nebuchadnezzar’s first siege of Jerusalem in the 3rd year of Jehoiakim, in 606 BC.
TL;DR
There are several controversies over the details of the seventy years of Babylonian captivity. My opinion is that the Book of Jeremiah reveals two periods, the first of which lasted from Nebuchadnezzar’s initial subjection of Judah in 2 Kings 24:1 to Cyrus’ release of the Jews with his decree in Ezra 1:1. The precise months and days of these two events are uncertain, but we can get a close estimate of 606 BC and 538 BC by looking at some archaeological objects.
The Tel el-Farʿah Plaque is an item that supports the existence of a 360-day civil year that we use for calculating the length of the prophetic 70 year period. Lunar Eclipse Tablet 1419 establishes 54 years between Nebuchadnezzar’s 14th year and Cyrus’ 2nd year, thus putting the beginning of the prophetic 70 years shortly before Nebuchadnezzar ascended the throne. The Babylonian Chronicles 4 and 5 (BM 22047 and BM 2194) support the notion that Nebuchadnezzar subdued Jerusalem in Nabopolassar’s 20th year, which was Jehoiakim’s 3rd year.
Now for the disclaimers: There may be a mistake somewhere in these conclusions. If so, the fault is entirely my own or, much less likely, in the archaeology. If there is a problem, then we know for certain that it is absolutely not the Bible’s fault, since it is the inerrant Word of God. Also, some other fine theologians have made some assumptions and conclusions that differ from mine, but are also acceptable. By no means should we throw a teacher under the bus if he only teaches one 70-year period, or if he sees the first period ending with the laying of the foundation instead of the decree, etc.
- Unless, of course, the year is evenly divisible by 100, but not evenly divisible by 400.
- It is worth mentioning that Israel’s civil calendar is similar to Babylon’s 360-day calendar, so the two are likely related, but many of Israel’s religious holidays predate her use of the 360-day civil calendar.
- Available online here.
- Nebuchadrezzar is another Anglicized spelling for Nebuchadnezzar. Both spellings refer to King Nebuchadnezzar II, whose name in Akkadian was Nabûkudurriuṣur. The Hebrew and Aramaic spellings have even more variety and include Nebûkadneʾtstsar, Nebûkadnetstsar, Nebûkadreʾtstsar, Nebûkadreʾtsôr, and Nebûkkadnetstsar.
- Chronicle 5, obverse, lns. 1–11 in Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (Locust Valley, NY: J.J. Augustin Publisher, 1975), pg. 99–100.