70 Years of Exile

Daniel 9:1-3

¹ In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, by descent a Mede, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans—

² in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.

³ Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.

Shortly after Daniel survives the lions’ den, we find him scouring the Scriptures (that part of the Old Testament already on the scrolls, which would have included a great deal of it by this time) and seeking God’s face. He is influenced by his brother prophet Jeremiah’s words about the length of the exile and is convinced that the time is drawing to a close. While the Old Testament would not have been completed yet, Daniel did recognize the scrolls that had been passed down (and obviously taken with them into captivity) were inspired by God and as such, authoritative.

In verse 3, we see Daniel use the name Yahweh for God. This is the only time in the entire book of Daniel that we see the use of this particular title for God. This is the name we find in Exodus 3:14, when God tells Moses who He is. Daniel is calling on the God of the Covenant, made originally with Abraham as he devotes himself to prayer. Historically speaking, Daniel knows that the time of the exile should be over and he is about to go before the Lord on the behalf of his nation.

“There are two passages in Jeremiah that speak of the “seventy years” of captivity. The first is Jeremiah 25:11–12, a prophecy given by Jeremiah in Jerusalem in 605 BC, the year Daniel was taken captive and subsequently hauled to Babylon with the first wave of exiles. There Jeremiah states that the land would become a “devastation” for seventy years and that Judah and other captive nations (see Jeremiah 25:19–26) would serve Babylon for seventy years. The second passage is part of a letter that Jeremiah in Jerusalem wrote to captives in Babylon in 597 BC. It urges the exiles to settle in Babylon and seek to prosper there because they will not return to Jerusalem until the seventy years are completed. This second passage indicates that since the seventy years Jeremiah prophesied earlier were not yet ended, the exiles were to take seriously his previous prediction of the duration of the captivity. Daniel saw that according to both of these prophecies, God would bring the captivity to an end with the punishment of Babylon, that is to say, when seventy years were completed for Babylon. The time of Daniel’s prayer is shortly after Babylon’s fall to Cyrus the Great in 539 BC. Daniel perceived that the event he read about in Jeremiah—the trigger that would bring the exile to an end and begin the restoration of Jerusalem—had happened. The date notice in Daniel 9:1–2 therefore explains the reason for his prayer about the restoration of Jerusalem. It was some sixty-seven or sixty-eight years after he had been taken into captivity. Daniel was now calling on God to keep his promise made through Jeremiah. Probably it was a matter of weeks or months after his prayer that Cyrus issued his edict in 538 BC permitting the return. Thus the total duration of the exile (605–538 BC) can easily be rounded up to seventy years.”

Steinmann, A. E. (2008). Daniel. Concordia Commentary (434–435). Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Pub. House.

At this point, Daniel is no longer a young man. He in fact never returns to Jerusalem, but faithfully prays for the exile to end, as God has promised. Tomorrow we will look closely at the prayer of a man who trusts in the Lord completely; and what does he concentrate on? Repentance!