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11 This whole land shall be a ruin and a waste. Seventy years these nations shall serve the king of Babylon;(A)

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21 All this was to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah: Until the land has retrieved its lost sabbaths, during all the time it lies waste it shall have rest while seventy years are fulfilled.

Decree of Cyrus. 22 [a]In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, in order to realize the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord roused the spirit of Cyrus, King of Persia, to spread this proclamation throughout his kingdom, both by word of mouth and in writing:(A)

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Footnotes

  1. 36:22–23 These verses are identical with those of Ezr 1:1–3a and were to prevent the work from ending on a note of doom.

I. The Return from Exile

Chapter 1

The Decree of Cyrus. (A)In the first year of Cyrus,[a] king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia to issue a proclamation throughout his entire kingdom, both by word of mouth and in writing:

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Footnotes

  1. 1:1 In the first year of Cyrus: the first regnal year of Cyrus was 539 B.C., but his first year as ruler of Babylon, after the conquest of that city, was 538 B.C., the year in which he issued an edict, replicated on the famous Cyrus cylinder, permitting the repatriation of peoples deported by the Babylonians.

(A)in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years the Lord had decreed to the prophet Jeremiah: Jerusalem was to lie in ruins for seventy years.[a]

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Footnotes

  1. 9:2 Seventy years: Jeremiah was understood to prophesy a Babylonian captivity of seventy years, a round number signifying the complete passing away of the existing generation (Jer 25:11; 29:10). On this view Jeremiah’s prophecy was seen to be fulfilled in the capture of Babylon by Cyrus and the subsequent return of the Jews to Palestine. However, the author of Daniel, living during the persecution of Antiochus, extends Jeremiah’s number to seventy weeks of years (Dn 9:24), i.e., seven times seventy years, to encompass the period of Seleucid persecution.

12 Then the angel of the Lord replied, “Lord of hosts, how long will you be without mercy for Jerusalem and the cities of Judah that have felt your anger these seventy years?”[a](A)

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Footnotes

  1. 1:12 These seventy years: allusion to the period of divine anger mentioned in Jer 25:11–12 and 29:10. Here the symbolic number seventy is understood to mark the period without a Temple in Jerusalem. Since these seventy years would have been almost over at this point, this symbolic number would have provided motivation for rebuilding the Temple as a sign of the end of the exile.

Say to all the people of the land and to the priests: When you fasted and lamented in the fifth and in the seventh month[a] these seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted?(A)

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Footnotes

  1. 7:5 Seventh month: the time of a fast in memory of the murder of Gedaliah, the governor installed by the Babylonians after they conquered Jerusalem (see 2 Kgs 25:25; Jer 41:1–3). Seventy years: see note on 1:12.