And this whole land shall become a waste, an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.
This verse fixes two things at once: the ruin of Judah, and how long it will last. Two questions press. Why would God hand His own land over to a foreign king? And why seventy years?
Jeremiah warned and pleaded through the last days of the kingdom. When the sentence came, it carried an exact length.
Jeremiah prophesied during the closing days of the kingdom. He kept warning his people that the coming judgments were certain. He kept pleading with them to repent and humble themselves before the God whose anger they had provoked by their wickedness and folly… First, Cyrus is named long years before he was born into this world. Later, while announcing the coming captivity of the people, Jeremiah proclaims the exact length of their exile.
In this chapter God calls the king of Babylon His own servant. That title had belonged to someone else.
It is a remarkable word. It was no longer Zedekiah, My servant, but it was Nebuchadnezzar, My servant. The children of Israel and of Judah were about to lose their special place as His nation, too. It was now a question, not of being His servant as a special honour, but only in providence. Nebuchadnezzar, the idolatrous Gentile, could be His servant in this way as much as anyone else.
Commentators see this handover as the start of a long era, not a passing episode. The Gentiles are the nations outside Israel.
The times of the Gentiles began with Nebuchadnezzar. God allowed him to make Israel pay tribute. He dethroned Judah's king and carried the people away captive. From then until the Lord comes to reign, "the times of the Gentiles" run their course. It is worth seeing why God allowed this. It began because of Israel's idolatry. It continued later because of their great sin in rejecting their Messiah.
"These nations" puts Judah in the same sentence as the peoples around it. God's judgment starts with His own, and then it spreads.
It is a universal principle that God in judgment begins with what bears His name — His people, His city, His house. And if He begins there, where can He stop? It is impossible for Him to pass by His proud enemies. So this judgment falls first on the nations that had most to do with His people. But it does not stop until He takes in all the kings, kingdoms, and inhabitants of the earth.
There is another reason the land had to lie empty. The law gave the land a rest year, one in every seven, and Israel never kept it.
There is no record of the Sabbatical year or the year of Jubilee ever being kept. Leviticus 26:34-35 predicts what would happen if the Israelites did not let the land keep its sabbaths. It reads almost like a prophecy: the land would lie desolate because it did not rest in its sabbaths. Jeremiah 25:11-12, Jeremiah 29:10 and Daniel 9:2 give the actual desolation as seventy years. The land was to have rested one year in every seven. So the 70 years answer to 70 × 7 = 490 years… It seems that in this, as in everything else, they failed to obey. But the Jubilee will be made good to them in grace when they own their Messiah.
God set the length Himself. Both ends of the number matter.
Jehovah measured the stay of seventy years in Babylon. It was long enough to complete His chastening. It was short enough to prove His tender mercy, and to leave room for a greater display of Himself.
One man in exile took his comfort from that limit.
Daniel is acting here in faith. He had the comfort of knowing more. When God pronounced the judgment of captivity on His people, He had also declared its limit. Jeremiah had predicted that it would last seventy years. He had also predicted that afterwards God would judge Babylon by the hand of Cyrus. So Daniel was wrapped up in the interests of the people of God, and his thoughts were on this promised deliverance.
- Cause. Israel's idolatry brought the sentence. Jeremiah warned and pleaded for years before it fell.
- Instrument. The title "My servant" passes from Judah's king to Nebuchadnezzar. Rule moves into Gentile hands, and the times of the Gentiles begin.
- Measure. Seventy years matches the seventy rest years the land never got. God collected in one stretch what Israel withheld across 490 years.
- Limit. The number is mercy inside judgment: long enough to do the chastening, short enough to show His tenderness.
- Result. God's stated limit gave Daniel something firm to hold in exile. And the judgment in this chapter runs past Babylon to all the kings and nations of the earth.
And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, [that] I will visit on the king of Babylon and on that nation, saith Jehovah, their iniquity, and on the land of the Chaldeans, and I will make it perpetual desolations.
The seventy years announced over Judah were not only a sentence on God's people. They were also a clock running on the empire that carried them away. When the time is up, the same word that handed Judah over turns on the king of Babylon, his nation and his land. The punishment given to the punisher carries no seventy-year limit.
The measure God set for Judah is not the measure He sets for Babylon.
They had refused all God's patient warnings, which grew more solemn as time went on, and His gracious encouragements too. So, because of their deliberate and persistent idolatry, He announces the punishment they deserve at the hand of the king of Babylon. After their seventy years' captivity, Jehovah must in turn visit their punisher — and with no such limit as He set for Judah. Had the instrument of divine judgment lifted itself up proudly? Then it must surely be judged itself, without mercy.
This is God's settled way with every power He uses.
God might use Jeroboam to discipline Solomon and his house. He might use the kings of Assyria to discipline Jeroboam's subjects. He might use Nebuchadnezzar to discipline Judah and its kings. But God has had to judge every one of them in their turn. These rods of His anger were no more faithful to God than the people He used them against.
Babylon falls for its own guilt, not just for its role as God's instrument. One writer points to the moment that guilt came to a head.
God allowed Nebuchadnezzar to destroy the temple, after the glory had departed, and to take its holy vessels into Babylon. But God brought Nebuchadnezzar low in His own time. Later the godless Belshazzar challenged the God of Israel by using the holy vessels to praise the gods of his own making. Then God stepped in to defend the honour of His name in the overthrow of Babylon and its godless ruler. God was patient. He allowed the holy vessels to stay in Nebuchadnezzar's temple, but He would not tolerate their use for the worship of other gods.
In this chapter the cup of wrath goes first to Jerusalem, and only then to the other nations. One writer draws a principle from that order.
It is therefore a universal principle that God in judgment begins with that which bears His name — His people, His city, His house. And if He begins there, where can He stop? It is impossible for Him to pass by His proud enemies.
The lasting ruin named here falls on a real king, a real nation and a real land.
In chapter 25:12 God gives the surrounding nations up to Nebuchadnezzar for lasting desolation. Then, at the end of seventy years, He gives up the king, the nation and the land of the Chaldeans, and makes it a lasting desolation.
Some point to the small settlement that still sits on the site.
Babylon was forty-eight miles round: a small Arab place is at one corner of its site. Does that make Babylon rebuilt or inhabited? Is it not a proof of the opposite, and of its ruin?
The seventy years ran out on time, and history names the man God used to end the captivity.
When the 70 years' captivity that Jeremiah prophesied ran out, God stirred up the spirit of Cyrus. A proclamation went out that the house of the LORD God of Israel was to be rebuilt, and the captives had permission to return. He also restored the holy vessels that had been carried from Jerusalem to Babylon... This would be about B.C. 536, the 70 years of captivity having begun in B.C. 606, the date of the first captivity of Judah.
Daniel learned that the captivity was ending from a book, not from a vision.
God could have told Daniel directly, by vision or dreams or an angel, that the long captivity of His people was drawing to a close. But this is not His way. As a rule, He works a miracle only when one is needed. Suppose His saints or servants can learn His will by careful study of His Word and communion with Himself. Then they need not, and should not, expect Him to make His mind known by some shorter or easier way. By studying the writings of God's servants, Daniel understood that the desolations of the beloved city of his fathers were about to end.
- Measured — Judah's punishment was fixed at seventy years. Babylon's has no such limit.
- Reversed — When the time is up, God breaks the rod He used. No instrument stays useful for ever.
- Deserved — Babylon falls "for their iniquity," not just for its role. Its abuse of the vessels from God's house sealed the case.
- Universal — God begins judgment with what bears His name. Having begun there, He will not pass over His proud enemies.
- Trustworthy — The seventy years ended on time. Cyrus sent the captives home, and Daniel found it all in a book.