Jeremiah 25:11-12

25:11 This whole area ¹  will become a desolate wasteland. These nations will be subject to the king of Babylon for seventy years.’ ² 

25:12 “‘But when the seventy years are over, I will punish the king of Babylon and his nation ³  for their sins. I will make the land of Babylon ⁴  an everlasting ruin. ⁵  I, the Lord, affirm it! ⁶ 

Jeremiah 52:31-34

Jehoiachin in Exile

52:31 In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of King Jehoiachin of Judah, on the twenty-fifth ⁷  day of the twelfth month, ⁸  Evil-Merodach, in the first year of his reign, pardoned ⁹  King Jehoiachin of Judah and released him from prison. 52:32 He spoke kindly to him and gave him a more prestigious position than ¹⁰  the other kings who were with him in Babylon. 52:33 Jehoiachin ¹¹  took off his prison clothes and ate daily in the king’s presence for the rest of his life. 52:34 He was given daily provisions by the king of Babylon for the rest of his life until the day he died.

Daniel 9:2

9:2 in the first year of his reign ¹²  I, Daniel, came to understand from the sacred books ¹³  that, according to the word of the LORD ¹⁴  disclosed to the prophet Jeremiah, the years for the fulfilling of the desolation of Jerusalem ¹⁵  were seventy in number.

¹ tn Heb “All this land.”

² sn It should be noted that the text says that the nations will be subject to the king of Babylon for seventy years, not that they will lie desolate for seventy years. Though several proposals have been made for dating this period, many ignore this fact. This most likely refers to the period beginning with Nebuchadnezzar’s defeat of Pharaoh Necho at Carchemish in 605 b.c. and the beginning of his rule over Babylon. At this time Babylon became the dominant force in the area and continued to be so until the fall of Babylon in 538 b.c. More particularly Judah became a vassal state (cf. Jer 46:2; 2 Kgs 24:1) in 605 b.c. and was allowed to return to her homeland in 538 when Cyrus issued his edict allowing all the nations exiled by Babylon to return to their homelands. (See 2 Chr 36:21 and Ezra 1:2-4; the application there is made to Judah but the decree of Cyrus was broader.)

³ tn Heb “that nation.”

⁴ tn Heb “the land of the Chaldeans.” See the study note on 21:4 for the use of the term “Chaldeans.”

⁵ tn Heb “I will visit upon the king of Babylon and upon that nation, oracle of the Lord, their iniquity even upon the land of the Chaldeans and I will make it everlasting ruins.” The sentence has been restructured to avoid ambiguity and to conform the style more to contemporary English.

⁶ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

⁷ sn The parallel account in 2 Kgs 25:28 has “twenty-seventh.”

⁸ sn The twenty-fifth day would be March 20, 561 b.c. in modern reckoning.

⁹ tn Heb “lifted up the head of.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “made his throne above the throne of

¹¹ tn The subject is unstated in the Hebrew text, but Jehoiachin is clearly the subject of the following verb.

¹² tc This phrase, repeated from v. 1, is absent in Theodotion.

¹³ tn The Hebrew text has “books”; the word “sacred” has been added in the translation to clarify that it is Scriptures that are referred to.

¹⁴ sn The tetragrammaton (the four Hebrew letters which constitute the divine Name, YHWH) appears eight times in this chapter, and nowhere else in the book of Daniel.

¹⁵ map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.