For thus saith Jehovah When seventy years shall be accomplished for Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in bringing you back to this place.
Jeremiah writes to Jews already deported to Babylon. Other voices promised them a quick trip home; God gives them a date instead — seventy years, and then He would come for them. So what were His people to do with the years in between?
False prophets were feeding the exiles a comfortable lie. This promise struck straight at it.
Many false prophets had appeared among the captives, and they seem to have prompted Jeremiah's letter. They encouraged the rebellious and disobedient spirit that was common among the exiles. They prophesied falsely, led the people away, and awakened the deceptive hope of an early return from the captivity... To dispel this false hope Jeremiah had sent them the message.
God fixed the length, and He fixed it for two reasons at once.
The stay of seventy years in Babylon was measured by the Lord. 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.
The number itself has a history behind it. The law required the land to rest one year in every seven, and that rest had been ignored.
There is no record of the Sabbatical year and the year of Jubilee ever being kept. Leviticus 26:34-35 predicts what would happen if the Israelites did not let the land keep the sabbaths... Jeremiah 25:11-12, Jeremiah 29:10 and Daniel 9:2 all give the actual desolation as seventy years. And as the land was to have rested one year in every seven, it follows that the seventy answer to 70 × 7 = 490 years.
The date was not the only thing God fixed in advance.
First, then, Cyrus is named long years before he was born into this world. Later, while Jeremiah announces the coming captivity of the people, he also proclaims the exact length of their exile.
Three men served that one return in three different ways.
Daniel himself did not return, though his face was constantly turned towards Jerusalem. God used him for it in prayer, as He used Cyrus in providence and Jeremiah in prophecy. Behind it all was God Himself, working in purpose and in power.
The return was set for later. The years before it still had to be lived.
They had to accept the judgment. They also had to bear it patiently to the end of the seventy years the Lord had assigned to it. So Jeremiah wrote to those taken captive under king Jeconiah: "Build houses and dwell in them, and plant gardens and eat their fruit"... At the appointed time there was to be a restoration.
Kelly points to the frame of mind it called for.
There was to be nothing morbid in their habits. They were to receive all their circumstances from God. They were happily to trust in the Lord, but to do so as captives of Nebuchadnezzar.
Generations later Daniel learned that the exile was nearly over. He learned it by reading, not by a vision.
God could easily have told Daniel directly that the long captivity of His people was nearly over. He could have used a vision, a dream, or an angel. But this is not His way... His saints or servants can learn His will by careful study of His Word and by communion with Himself. When they can, they need not and should not expect Him to make His mind known by some shorter or easier way.
What he received in answer went further than what he asked for.
It is very important to see that God's revealed purpose goes far beyond the prophet's prayer... In his prayers Daniel asked for one thing: that God would keep the promise made through Jeremiah... But in the message sent through Gabriel, God shows him that He had still larger thoughts of blessing for His people.
- Measured — God set the seventy years, not Babylon. Long enough to complete His chastening, short enough to prove His mercy.
- Counted — seventy years matched the sabbath rests the land never got. Even the length of the discipline fit the debt.
- Promised — "I will visit you" bound God to act. He had named Cyrus, the king He used in that return, long before the man was born.
- Lived — until the date came they were to build and plant in Babylon. They were to take their circumstances from God and trust Him there.
- Prayed — Daniel found this promise by reading Scripture, and it set him praying. God's answer went far beyond the return he asked for.
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith Jehovah, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you in your latter end a hope.
Jeremiah sent this promise in a letter from Jerusalem to the Jews deported to Babylon, while false prophets promised them a quick return home. The verse answers the deepest question of any exile: does God still care about people He is punishing, and what is His real aim behind their trouble?
The exile was not bad luck, and Babylon's king was not the real power behind it. God Himself had ordered it — and that is exactly why hope was possible. William Kelly draws out the wonder of the letter itself:
It wasn't luck for Jeconiah (the young king taken captive to Babylon) and the people, and it wasn't Babylon's king who brought the Jews low — it was the Lord of hosts. He had caused them to be carried away to the conqueror's city, and He was the one who now spoke to them through Jeremiah. How gracious of Him to notice them after all their guilt, and to link His name with theirs in their fallen state!
God Himself fixed the length of the exile — seventy years, a real judgment with a measured end. Kelly explains the balance in that number:
The stay of seventy years in Babylon was measured by the Lord. It was long enough to accomplish His chastening; it was short enough to prove His tender mercy, and to leave room for a greater display of Himself.
One writer contrasts violent upheaval with God's true nature. Judgment is real, but it never shows God's heart:
Rending, upheaving, and devouring can never show what God is really like; they can never express the thoughts of His heart. Judgment He must perform, though it is His strange work; yet behind it all He says, "I know the plans I have for you … plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." The end, which is always before God, is the blessing of His people in peace and love — the expression of His own nature.
A group of Jews did return after the seventy years. Yet Arno Gaebelein notes that the promise reaches further than that first homecoming:
How gracious and merciful He is towards His own! In His own time all His gracious purposes will be fully accomplished in that nation, as they were partially accomplished in the return of a remnant after the exile. Verse 14 speaks of the larger return, "gathered out from all the nations."
What God said to captives in Babylon shows how He deals with His people in every age. Greg Quail makes the connection:
He may allow circumstances for us like Israel's captivity in Babylon. To outward appearance all may be in turmoil. But He is the God of peace, and has thoughts of peace toward us, and has planned for us a "future and a hope."
J Wilson Smith turns the verse into rest for a tired believer:
This Scripture is a fine pillow of down for a weary head, and every one of us may lay our heads on that divine pillow in the middle of conflict and distress. There is no treasure-store for God's people like the thoughts of God. God always has an end in view in His dealings with His children: He wants to give us a "future and a hope."
He also shows what that "end" looks like in a single life:
It is like a refiner of silver, who stirs the molten metal up to a certain point — the point at which he can see the clear reflection of himself in the metal. Then he says: that is enough! In the same way, when the child of God is brought to the point where he can say, "Your will be done," that is the reflection of His image.
W. T. P. Wolston presses the verse to its furthest point — God's thoughts of peace led Him to give His Son ("only begotten" means God's one-of-a-kind Son):
God has so thought of us that He has sent His only begotten Son into the world to die for us, for "Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18).
God's thoughts run ahead of His people — from the trouble, through the trouble, to the end:
- Measured. The seventy years were set by God, not chance: long enough to correct, short enough to prove His tender mercy.
- Revealed. Judgment is God's "strange work"; His nature is peace, and the end He always has in view is the blessing of His people.
- Promised. The promise was partly fulfilled when a remnant returned after the exile; verse 14 points to a larger gathering still to come.
- Personal. The same God of peace plans a "future and a hope" for believers in their own "Babylons" — a pillow of down for a weary head, a Refiner watching for His own reflection.
- Proven. God's thoughts of peace went all the way to giving His Son to die, "that he might bring us to God."