king artaxerxes' decree to rebuild jerusalem

Part 2, Bibliotheca Sacra, JulySeptember 2009, p. 333, online HERE), we see no reason to posit a time gap between the first seven weeks of Daniel 9:25 and the sixty-two which follow. Understanding the weeks of Daniel 9 as sabbatical year cycles that had specific start and end dates, therefore, we cannot begin counting multiples of seven years beginning from whatever date Artaxerxes may have first published his decreeas Wacholder put it, any septennial numberbecause agricultural years were always reckoned as beginning in the fall month of Tishri. There had to be both a physical and a spiritual return for the desolation to be fully lifted. 2 Samuel 15:25 Now we turn to examine the connection of Daniels Seventy Weeks to the sabbatical year cycles. 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. Porunca lui Darius. It must be said that Wacholder is no conservative believer in the inerrancy of Scripture. 'amar] of Jerusalem, She shall be inhabited! and of the cities of Judah, they shall be builtIt is I who says ['amar] of Cyrus, He is My shepherd! 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. How to Sell Decree To Rebuild Jerusalem Artaxerxes to a Skeptic. So it pleased the king to send me; and I set him a time. Nehemiah 10:31 (NIV): Every seventh year we will forgo working the land [observe a sabbatical year] and will cancel all debts [which caused indentured servitude] (brackets added). And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses that the LORD had commanded Israel. 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. of Jerusalem constructed in 445 B.C. Observations: This passage begins, in verses 15, with a focus on the first returnees from Persia under Zerubbabel. Ezra 6:14: And the elders of the Jews were successful in building [the Temple] through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. After the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the Jewish Temple and hauled off tens of thousands of Jews into captivity, the Jews were allowed to return to Judah after the Persians conquered Babylon. Given how clear Cyrus permission had been to rebuild the Temple, this complaint must have focused on something other than Temple construction. , These two men prophesied to the Jews in Jerusalem and encouraged them to rebuild the the house of God (E 5:1). 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. dabar, usually rendered word] to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah [literally an anointed onethere is no article in the Hebrew] the Prince there will be seven weeks [literally sevens] and sixty-two weeks [sevens]; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. In the Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew Lexicon, the entry for shuwb includes reference to Isaiah 1:26. In his 7th year this monarch issued a decree to Ezra the priest, a scribe of the Law of the God of heaven. The decree to rebuild Jerusalem in verse 25 may refer to King Artaxerxes authorizing Nehemiah to rebuild Jerusalem in March of 445 BC That is when the count. 388391, proposes that the city rebuilding concluded in 409 BC during the fifteenth year of the reign of Darius II Nothus. It was only after Ezra, the priest and scribe, came and began to teach and admonish the people that full obedience to all that the Law of Moses required was insisted upon. Later, He looked ahead to when the people would enter the Promised Land: Leviticus 25:1-4: The LORD then spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, saying, Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land which I shall give you, then the land shall have a sabbath to the LORD. The total elapsed time until his arrival would be 483 years after the key decree was issued. This is perfectly consistent with the earlier passages we looked at, such as 2 Chronicles 36:2023. Bear with me for a moment while I make a seeming digression. Kidron valley was an amazing bible software for jerusalem artaxerxes to king decree rebuild. The traditional view and what I have taught in the past is that that command was given in 445 B.C. This conclusion is an undemonstrated leap of logic. Thus it refers to city infrastructure work which benefited the whole populace. But Artaban sought the crown for himself, and therefore aimed at . 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. 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. He led the Jews in rebuilding the walls around their capitol city. An attempt to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem was made after Artaxerxes I of Persia became king (465-464 to 424-23 BC). Sabbatical Year Cycles were Reset After the Exile. 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. We will look at the latter term first. Artaxerxes I was the King of Persia during the time of Nehemiah and Ezra. 25:2), the equivalent of the year of shemittah or release (Deut. To any ancient Jew, the weeks of Daniel 9:25, which were periods of seven years, would immediately bring to mind the sabbatical year cycles the LORD established in Exodus 23:1011 and Leviticus 25. However, starting from the date of this incident throws the 70-weeks prophecy way off 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. 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. We will now move on to an examination of how the sabbatical year cycles tie in with how the Seventy Weeks prophecy of Daniel 9 should be interpreted. 'amar) that Jerusalem will be inhabited and Judean cities will be build. The response of the Samaritans was to oppose the Temple construction efforts all through the days of Cyrus, through the reigns of Cambyses and Smerdis/Bardiya that followed him, and into the second year of Darius Hystaspes (Ezra 4:24), who decreed capital punishment upon any who would hinder the Temples completion (Ezra 6:11). The result was the coming of Nebuchadnezzar and the exile of the people from the Land: 2 Chronicles 36:1923: Then they burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem, and burned all its fortified buildings with fire and destroyed all its valuable articles. 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. From the Desk of Dr. Bryant G. Wood: Has Bethsaida Been Discovered? Know therefore and understand,That from the going forth of the commandTo restore and build JerusalemUntil Messiah the Prince,There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks;The street shall be built again, and the wall, Even in troublesome times. 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Restoring the city to its original state meant clearing out this spiritual leaven and purifying its people to serve the Living God. . Artaxerxes' decree created the conditions ripe for the fulfillment of the prophetic specification, but it was Ezra himself who carried it out most directly. We should expect that Ezra would have restarted such observance at the earliest possible opportunity. Then the land will enjoy its sabbaths all the days of the desolation, while you are in your enemies land; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. However, his party first assembled themselves at the Ahava canal and did not actually start moving for eleven days, therefore the number of travelling days were 107 days. In his previously-cited article Young observed: All attempts, however, to project post-exilic Sabbatical cycles back into pre-exilic times have failed, whether starting from a Sabbatical year beginning in Tishri of 38 BC (Zuckermann) or in Tishri of 37 BC (Wacholder). Thus the going forth of the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem in Dan 9:25 was Ezras word, not the decree of Artaxerxes. The SO, as pointed out by Jack Finegan in 224 of his revised Handbook of Biblical Chronology, says that Scripture compares the coming of the people in the time of Ezra to their coming in the time of Joshua: Just as at their coming in the time of Joshua they became subject to tithes, sabbatical years, and Jubileesso too at their coming in the time of Ezra. Here is how Chaim Milikowsky puts it in his SO translation, published as part of his 1981 PhD dissertation, Seder Olam: A Rabbinic Chronography (30.2737, p. 545): And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and dwelt in the booths; for from the days of Joshua the son of Nun to that day the people of Israel had not done so (Neh 8:17). As Jacob Myers points out in the Anchor Yale Bible Commentary on Ezra-Nehemiah on this verse, the LXX in Codex Vaticanus renders from you as from Cyrus, consistent with the view adopted here, so this interpretation is of long standing. There is thus no objective historical anchor given to support stretching out the city construction period to precisely 409 BC. Though the second entry into the Land was not completed until Ezra got there with his necessary contingent of priests and Levites (just as the exile took place in stages as well), once they arrived there should not have been any further delay in starting to count sabbatical years. Since the rebuilt Temple was dedicated just six months after that, on Adar 3 (March 12), 515 BC (Ezra 6:15), it appears we should understand the destruction of the Temple as an integral part of the lands desolation, part of the spiritual component that accompanied the physicalparticularly since a Jewish remnant, as well as the Samaritans who later gave Nehemiah grief, were still there farming the land during those seventy years, yet not thereby violating its Sabbath rest. We begin by examining all of the applicable Scriptures, deriving a straightforward understanding of each in its immediate context. We must keep the important role of Artaxerxes clearly in mind. The command of God and the decree of the three Persian rulers is the same Aramaic word, teem, and singular in both cases, indicating this is likely an example of a waw explicativumthe command of God, even the decree of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes, as A. Philip Brown II suggested (see my previous article). The situation was not easy at the time in the Land of Israel in many ways. 1516 in a Radio Bible Class publication, The Daniel Papers (online at http://web001.rbc.org/pdf/discovery-series/the-daniel-papers.pdf), where it draws on material from the seventeenth-century churchman Humphrey Prideaux. Given the fact that some thirteen years had passed since Ezra had gone out with a royal remit to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, Nehemiah had been expecting a much better report! Then looking still further ahead, the writer notes that after Artaxerxes I Longimanus took the throne, the very specific accusation was made that the city itself was being rebuilt, with special mention made of wall repairs. That was four months. Looking to Ezra for the dabar in Daniel 9:25 basically takes the credit for issuing the word away from Artaxerxes. Desiring to let the Scriptures speak plainly and govern our understanding, several passages will first be set forth that teach the principle of sabbatical year observance. The NASB is used throughout, except as noted. King Cyrus and the Temple. to interpret them. The connection with the Feast of Booths confirms this; that feast takes place in Tishri, which was the beginning, not end, of the agriculture-based calendar that sabbatical and Jubilee year counting was tied to (Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1a). You are to do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove (emphasis added). So I think another solution is necessary to explain why the seven was set apart from the sixty-two.. It can only be said to be Artaxerxes in an indirect and oblique sense. This view is promoted on pp. Cyrus' decree had permitted them to rebuild the temple, not the city. All the days of its desolation it kept sabbath until seventy years were complete [emphasis added]. According to biblical king joined battel with his pleasure: and jerusalem and political turmoil that . The context of this passage is the situation just before the Babylonian captivity; as the ESV Study Bible notes for Isaiah 1:2428 express it, The prophet looks forward to a cleansed people after the historical judgment of the exile, restored to its mission. It promises the LORDs judgment on the nation, that their dross and alloytheir sinful compromises with the surrounding nationswill be removed. And The Command To "Restore And Build Jerusalem". Sabbatical Years Began in the Month of Tishri. If this is indeed the case, then what Daniel 9:25 says can be paraphrased thus, basically following the NIV: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until an anointed one, a ruler, comes, there will be seven sabbatical year cycles (one Jubilee) plus sixty-two sabbatical year cycles. Once this is done, God promises to restoreshuwb, the same word as in Daniel 9:25their judges as at the first, and their counselors as at the beginning. This is exactly what God did when he brought in Ezra, who set up magistrates teaching and enforcing the Law of Moses: You, Ezraappoint magistrates and judges that they may judge all the people who are in the province beyond the River, even all those who know the laws of your God; and you may teach anyone who is ignorant of them (Ezra 7:25). We find the people promising in Nehemiah 10:31 to forego the crops the seventh year and the exaction of every debt. (The NIV is clearer: Every seventh year we will forgo working the land and will cancel all debts.) This shows that by Nehemiahs arrival in 444 BC the people had been made quite aware of these sabbatical year requirements, and strongly implies that Ezra and his Levites had made their faithful observance a live issue from the time they arrived in 457. Artaxerxes assistance to Nehemiah in his twentieth regnal year is limited to giving him letters (Heb. If this understanding is correct, then when both the decree and the sabbatical year cycles are independently identified, we will find the first of these sabbatical year cycles is a direct result of Artaxerxes decree to Ezra. Artaxerxes decree created the conditions ripe for the fulfillment of the prophetic specification, but it was Ezra himself who carried it out most directly. The passage in Isaiah 1:26 is a prophecy of what Ezra would do. . 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! The term 'amar, often simply carrying the meaning to say, is not used elsewhere in Scripture to refer to a formal royal decree, so we should not conclude it necessarily signifies here that Cyrus himself would issue the specific edict authorizing city rebuildingbut he would definitely have something to do with it. 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