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. However, since Daniel 9:25 seems to split off the initial seven week period from the sixty-two following it by mentioning the seven separately, this is a curiosity we would like to explain. 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. Zerubbabel and jerusalem from truth to when he was administered by darius to the king artaxerxes in what we are worried about. An attempt to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem was made after Artaxerxes I of Persia became king (465-464 to 424-23 BC). The Commandment to Restore and to Build Jerusalem John. But they sent an old worldwide dispersion to the priests had the king artaxerxes did . 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. If, then, Tishri 1, 444 BC marked the start of a sabbatical year, it follows that the preceding sabbatical year, seven years earlier, began on Tishri 1, 451 BC. 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. This is consistent with the text of Leviticus 25, which for both Sabbatical and Jubilee years speaks of sowing before mentioning reaping. Gods Principle of Sabbatical Year Observance. However, there is good reason for expressing two stages of time. The quarterly says: "Cyrus issued a decree about 538 b.c., freeing up God's people to return to their country and to rebuild the temple. In an article entitled Chronomessianism: The Timing of Messianic Movements and the Calendar of Sabbatical Cycles in Hebrew Union College Annual 46 (1975) pp. Toward a Biblical Understanding of Cyrus Decree. Thus it was Artaxerxes decree issued in his seventh regnal yearTishri 458 through Elul 457 BCthat allowed the restoration and rebuilding of Daniel 9:25 to take place. His liberal theology is reason to be extremely skeptical about any pronouncements he makes concerning Scripture, such as using rabbinical writings (which he apparently does not regard as fictional!) There is a good picture of one at https://picryl.com/media/looking-down-moat-outside-tower-of-david-toward-clock-tower-before-1917-american. And then King Cyrus came along, conquered the Babylonians, and decreed that people conquered by Babylon could return to their rightful lands - and that included the nation of Israel. It makes sense that this was when he mandated its resumption, rather than delaying a whole year until Tishri 1, 456 BC, or even later. Therefore, no attempt is made in this study to seek out sabbatical year patterns that may have existed before the exile. 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. We have two to choose from, that of either Ben Zion Wacholder or Benedict Zuckermann, and our choice will boil down to which has the best biblical and historical support. 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. Join us in our mission! 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. In Israel, the sowing of the winter crops (barley and wheat) takes place in approximately November and reaping takes place in the spring. 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. The reason for this is that counting was interrupted during the exile, since the stipulations of the Sabbatical years were only commanded to be observed while Israel was in its land (Lv 25:2). However, starting from the date of this incident throws the 70-weeks prophecy way off So it pleased the king to send me; and I set him a time. Is there any evidence this was the case? Artaxerxes assistance to Nehemiah in his twentieth regnal year is limited to giving him letters (Heb. The situation was not easy at the time in the Land of Israel in many ways. 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). "Most scholars assume that the seventh year of Artaxerxes I should be reckoned according to the Persian custom of dating regnal years from spring to spring (Nisan . 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. Moreover, the observance of these regular cycles was a non-negotiable requirement of the Law laid upon the Jews: You shall do these things, said the Almighty. How to Sell Decree To Rebuild Jerusalem Artaxerxes to a Skeptic. Nevertheless, from this assumption he then suggests the Jews who came up from you must refer to those who had arrived from Artaxerxes with Ezra in 457 BC. The one who sent out the word to begin the reconstruction of Jerusalem was Ezra. Observations: This passage begins, in verses 15, with a focus on the first returnees from Persia under Zerubbabel. 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. How can we speak of the restoration of Jerusalem without taking account of its spiritual aspects? of Jerusalem constructed in 445 B.C. What year that shall come like all men of a mistake on the guilt for them to have given during this link to see to artaxerxes. We will look at the latter term first. 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. Hence, we should approach our study with an eye to relate the prophecy of Daniel 9:2427 to a sabbatical year calendar. Then Darius the king made a decree, and search was made in the house of the rolls, where the treasures were laid up in Babylon Ezra 7:1,8,11-26 Now after these things, in the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, Ezra the son of Seraiah, the son of Azariah, the son of Hilkiah, restore and to build Jerusalem. Therefore, there are exactly 69 Weeks of Years (173,880 days) between the decree of King Artaxerxes in 445 B.C to rebuild Jerusalem to Palm Sunday, April 6, 32 A.D.!! . 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. Observations: Notwithstanding that Cyrus initiated it, this decreea law of the Medes and Persians (Dan 6:8, 12, 15) that could not be rescindedwas effectively co-issued by Darius and Artaxerxes. During his reign, he halted the rebuilding of the Temple area that his predecessor Cyrus had allowed. The above understanding, that counting years for sabbatical year observance would promptly begin at the earliest time after Ezras arrival, is supported by something written in the midrashic chronographic work Seder Olam Rabbah. motza'] of a decree [Heb. In Notions of Exile, Subjugation and Return in Rabbinic Literature, in James M. Scott, ed., Exile: Old Testament, Jewish, and Christian Conceptions (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 265296 (online at https://www.academia.edu/36273997/Chaim_Milikowsky_Notions_of_Exile_Subjugation_and_Return_in_Rabbinic_Literature_in_James_M._Scott_ed._Exile_Old_Testament_Jewish_and_Christian_Conceptions_Leiden_Brill_1997_265-296), the above translation is quoted with this comment: The main thrust of the passage is to compare the second entry into the Land, in the time of Ezra, to the first entry into the Land, in the time of Joshua. Although the prophesying of Haggai and Zechariah was entirely concerned with Temple matters, and thus what they finished building must in this context refer only to the Temple, yet Artaxerxes decree opened the door for city rebuilding work as well, as the next passage indicates. Sets of seven is readily seen as a synonym for sabbatical year cycles. 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