Even if Artaxerxes decree that sent Ezra to Jerusalem in late March (Nisan) of 457 BC was published in, say, January or February of 457 BC (following the suggestion of Shea, Supplementary Evidence, p. 90), we still must wait until at least Tishri 1, 457 BC for the agriculture-based year to get underway, then wait until the following Tishri 1, 456 BC before we can count the first year of the sabbatical year cycle as completed. Nothing is said about city rebuilding. Sabbatical and Jubilee years therefore started in Tishri, the month in which the Jewish Rosh HaShanah or New Years Day was celebrated in the past and is celebrated in our own day. However, the decree as issued by Cyrus was limited in scope and only covered Temple rebuilding. The burning of the Temple, an essential aspect of the desolation, is known to have taken place on Av 9 (July 29), 587 BC, about two months before the next agricultural year would have begun on Tishri 1 (September 18), 587 BC. Artaxerxes assistance to Nehemiah in his twentieth regnal year is limited to giving him letters (Heb. . Exodus 23:1011: You shall sow your land for six years and gather in its yield, but on the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the needy of your people may eat; and whatever they leave the beast of the field may eat. Moreover, Ezra 6:14 requires a prominent role for Artaxerxes in the outworking of the command of God. And The Command To "Restore And Build Jerusalem". No matter what your level of interest, from keeping abreast of the fascinating research that comes out of the field work, to actively participating in an archaeological dig, you can become an integral part of our ministry. And there went up also to Jerusalem, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king, some of the people of Israel, and some of the priests and Levites, the singers and gatekeepers, and the temple servant Cyrus is responsible for returning a number of peoples to their lands and rebuilding their temples in order to get more gods favorable to him and his family. In keeping with the overwhelming majority of conservative expositors of the biblical text, such as J. Paul Tanner (Is Daniels Seventy-Weeks Prophecy Messianic? Just as his voice or word went throughout the land to gather at Jerusalem to deal with the issue of foreign wives, so his word was sent forth after the episode to call the people back to Jerusalem for its reconstruction. The Commandment to Restore and to Build Jerusalem John. Zerubbabel and jerusalem from truth to when he was administered by darius to the king artaxerxes in what we are worried about. Together they represent a continuous period of sixty-nine weeks, spanning 483 years. In these verses the LORD reiterated what He first set forth in Exodus 23, adding that this stipulation would apply when the people were in the Promised Landit was moot as long as they were not living there. Gods Principle of Sabbatical Year Observance. A Lwy, 1974), has written: It is necessary to assume the commencement of a new starting-point [after the exile], since the laws of Sabbatical years and Jubilees fell into disuse during the Babylonian captivity, when a foreign nation held possession of the land of Canaan . During his reign, he halted the rebuilding of the Temple area that his predecessor Cyrus had allowed. Here we present the extended passage, Isaiah 1:2126: How the faithful city has become a harlot,She who was full of justice!Righteousness once lodged in her,But now murderers.Your silver has become dross,Your drink diluted with water.Your rulers are rebelsAnd companions of thieves;Everyone loves a bribeAnd chases after rewards.They do not defend the orphan,Nor does the widow's plea come before them.Therefore the Lord GOD of hosts,The Mighty One of Israel, declares,Ah, I will be relieved of My adversariesAnd avenge Myself on My foes.I will also turn My hand against you,And will smelt away your dross as with lyeAnd will remove all your alloy.Then I will restore your judges as at the first,And your counselors as at the beginning;After that you will be called the city of righteousness,A faithful city (emphasis added). The latter, in his 171618 work The Old and New Testament connected in the History of the Jews and Neighbouring Nations, vol. Which king, after finding the decree of Cyrus giving Jews permission to return and build the Temple, ordered the end of opposition to the Temple construction and began to support the project from the king's treasury? appearing before Artaxerxes. 1:1-3; 2:1) as the decree that should provide the starting date of the prophecy (see, e.g., Robert Anderson, The Coming Prince [Grand Rapids: KregelPub., n.d.]). Besides, if the creditor had waited until the end of the seventh year, the debtor would have given him seven years of service, not six! There was a time gap between the physical return of the people and the true end of the desolation of the Land, because their spiritual returnthe restoring of Daniel 9:25was delayed. In Supplementary Evidence cited above (p. 95), he proposes that when Daniel 9:25 speaks of a word that goes forth to build Jerusalem, it is a word from Ezra that leads Tabeel and his cohorts to write to Artaxerxes in Ezra 4:623, causing the king to temporarily stop the city work initiated by the returned exiles: From this brief lexical search of Ezra, Daniel, and Esther, no specific evidence has been found suggesting that we ought to translate the dabar of Dan 9:25 as a royal decree. It could just as well be the word of a person other than the king. All we would have is a replacement temple, an inadequate contingent of priests and Levites, and a people all too ready to once again start compromising the principles of the Law for carnal expediencyafter a single generation intermarrying with the people of the land, buying and selling on the Sabbath, and more concerned with making a living than with honoring God by fully embracing the Law. Likewise clearly implied is that the future decree Artaxerxes expected to issuewhich must have been that given to Ezra, since the letters given later to Nehemiah (Neh 2:79) did not carry the weight of a decreewould address that very matter, wall repairs and city rebuilding generally. Nehemiah rebuilding Jerusalem, illustration by Adolf Hult, 1919 Nehemiah is the central figure of the Book of Nehemiah, which describes his work in rebuilding Jerusalem during the Second Temple period. Site Design and Management by:Nehemiah Communications [http://nehemiahcommunications.com] & Enktesis [http://enktesis.com], Daniel-The Top Ten Archaeological Discoveries: Digging for Truth Episode 194, Social Justice-The Counterfeit Gospel (Part Four): Digging for Truth Episode 193, Social Justice-The Counterfeit Gospel (Part Three): Digging for Truth Episode 192, Social Justice-The Counterfeit Gospel (Part Two): Digging for Truth Episode 191, Social JusticeThe Counterfeit Gospel (Part One): Digging for Truth Episode 190. Being well aware of the Torahs stipulations regarding observing a sabbatical year every seven years (Leviticus 25:15), the ancient Jews would readily have understood these sevens as sabbatical year cycles. 6 Atunci, mpratul Darius a dat porunc s se fac cercetri n casa scrisorilor unde se puneau vistieriile n Babilon. Restoring the spiritual aspects was more important in the LORDs eyes than merely repairing stone and mortar structures; God is always portrayed in the Word as primarily concerned with the spiritual life of His people, having them relate to Him by following His precepts faithfully, and in Daniel 9:25 the restoring is mentioned before the rebuilding, implying it was the more important consideration. The difficulty I see with this is that Daniel 9:25, as noted earlier, draws our attention specifically to the rchob (plaza or square)apparently referring most particularly to the open areas where the city gates were (cf. 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. Given how clear Cyrus permission had been to rebuild the Temple, this complaint must have focused on something other than Temple construction. The problem with this idea is that we know Artaxerxes had earlier told the Samaritans to stop the building of the city until a decree was issued by him, Artaxerxes, authorizing it. Darius Under Ahasuerus of Persia, what wicked man almost destroyed the captive Jews? Sabbatical Year Cycles were Reset After the Exile. Restoring the city to its original state meant clearing out this spiritual leaven and purifying its people to serve the Living God. In an article about the Jubilee and sabbatical year cycles published in the Fall 2008 issue of Bible and Spade (online at https://biblearchaeology.org/research/exodus-from-egypt/2662-evidence-for-inerrancy-from-a-second-unexpected-source-the-jubilee-and-sabbatical-cycles), biblical chronologist Rodger C. Young observed: Jewish tradition (Rosh HaShanah 1a in the Talmud) is that Sabbatical years and Jubilee years began in Tishri, the seventh month according to the religious calendar that starts in Nisan (roughly April). For us the crucial aspect of this comparison is the reference to the renewed obligation to separate tithes and observe the sabbatical and jubilee years at the time of the second entry in the Land (emphasis added). Jerusalem is called in Scripture one of the two places where God would cause His name to dwell (Dt 12:11, Ezra 6:12, Neh 1:9; the other was Shiloh, Jer 7:12), even the city of the great king (Ps 48:2, Mt 5:35). The Persian king, Artaxerxes, gave Nehemiah permission to return and rebuild the city of Jerusalem that lay in ruins. With that done, the 457 BC date will be regarded as established. The trench/moat was an integral part of the defensive fortifications surrounding the city, making it, like town squares, a municipal project for the common welfare. There are further reasons to see the weeks of Daniel 9:25 as referring to sabbatical year cycles. 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. Ezra 10:9, Neh 8:1, 3, 16). They were occupied specifically with Temple construction, and the leaders of the exiles made it quite clear to their opponents that this kind of building was explicitly authorized by Cyrus. And how can we speak of the spiritual significance of the city being restored apart from the reforms spearheaded by Ezra to fully reintegrate the prescriptions of the Law back into Jewish daily life? 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. In short, no decree was ever issued in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes. Temple Mount Revisionism: Requiesce in pace! 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). A second difference stems from the first. In view are not literal weeks of seven days, but periods of seven years. 2 Chronicles 36:2023: Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persiain order to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiahthe LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he sent a proclamation [Heb. Thus, it reveals the key year in which Christ was to begin His ministry! Then the angel said that after the decree to rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One would come there would be 7 7s and 62 7s. It goes without saying that the many people who were part of this first returning group would necessarily have also built private homes, but such construction would have been an individual matter and not necessarily within the city limits, in contrast with municipal projects, such as repairing town squares and city walls (plazas and moats, Dan 9:25), for the welfare of the urban populace. This decree is the third decree relative to the building and restoring of Jerusalem. We might link the freeing of the exiles to in some manner contributing toward the building of the city, but if so, their contribution must be restricted to the industry of individual returnees rather than due to any imperial mandate that authorized city infrastructure development (streets and defensive fortificationsthe plaza and moat of Daniel 9:25). As it is, take Ezras arrival in Jerusalem out of the picture, and its spiritual restoration gets only partly implemented at best. Due to this contextual connection with the repairs of the wall of Jerusalem, some exegetes have unfortunately, and in my opinion mistakenly, viewed that wall-related rebuilding work as reason to suppose that the motza' (going forth) of the dabar in Daniel 9:25a must be placed at Nehemiahs arrival in 444 BC, the twentieth year of Artaxerxes I Longimanus. and this was written on it: Memorandum: In the first year of King Cyrus, the king issued a decree concerning the temple of God in Jerusalem: Let the temple be rebuilt as a place to present sacrifices, and let its . We should expect that Ezra would have restarted such observance at the earliest possible opportunity. Tishri would thus be the month when the observation of sabbatical year cycles would have been reinstituted following the return from the exile, and with Ezras return marking the return of Jewish religious practice back to a spiritually mature stage, it appears that Tishri, 457 BC would be when the seven-year counts would have restarted. Observations: This verse speaks of a decreethe Hebrew word dabar, which could also have been translated word or command. It is not one of the usual terms for a royal edict (cf. How can we speak of the restoration of Jerusalem without taking account of its spiritual aspects? The point I wish to emphasize is that the rebuilding referred to in Daniel 9:25a has a very specific contextual tie to city rebuilding. Note well that there is no reference to any decree, any edict, any promulgated word from the king in this passage. A chronological chart is presented at https://archive.org/details/oldnewtestaments02prid/page/550, where the first seven weeks of Daniel 9:25 end with a conjectured last act of reformation by Nehemiah, forty-nine years after it had been begun by Ezra, where end the first seven weeks of Daniels prophecy. In Tanners article, p. 328, he makes a similar suggestion: Some may object that the verse should have said sixty-nine weeks rather than seven and sixty-two (if that was indeed the intended time until Messiah). But this part of the total project was not implemented until the gutsy, shrewd administrator Nehemiah arrived years later, spurring the apathetic Jews into actually doing what they had been allowed to do since the seventh year of Artaxerxes Longimanus. It included the irrevocable permission (as a law of the Medes and Persians) which allowed Nehemiah to later kick the wall repairs into high gear with nothing more than letters in hand. 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. 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. Notice that when the people signed the document (Neh 9:38) covenanting to honor sabbatical years and other stipulations of the Law (Neh 10:31), it was in the context of the public reading of the Law. But Artaban sought the crown for himself, and therefore aimed at . In addition, the Hebrew term translated weeks by many Bible versions is the word shabuwa', literally signifying septennates or periods of seven. Are not literal weeks of Daniel 9:25 as referring to sabbatical year cycles Daniel 9:25a has very! 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