Thus, it reveals the key year in which Christ was to begin His ministry! Join us in our mission! Assemble the people, the men and the women and children and the alien who is in your town, so that they may hear and learn and fear the LORD your God, and be careful to observe all the words of this law.. Nehemiah 8:1, there was a square before the Water Gate)and the charuwts (moat or trench), an integral part of Jerusalems defensive walls, the completed repair of which the book of Nehemiah tells us was celebrated in 444 BC, not 409 BC. 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! Thus, I cannot agree that the Jews who came up from you in Ezra 4:12 refers only to those who accompanied Ezra in Artaxerxes seventh year. The issuing of the decree and the start of the sevens counting are separate matters, though closely related. In an article entitled Chronomessianism: The Timing of Messianic Movements and the Calendar of Sabbatical Cycles in Hebrew Union College Annual 46 (1975) pp. Nehemiah was a high official in the Persian court of King Artaxerxes I at the capital city of Susa, which lay 150 miles east of the Tigris River in what is now modern Iran. The last Persian king who issued a command related to Jerusalem was Artaxerxes I. Ezra and Nehemiah were leaders in the reign of Artaxerxes. Jerusalem is called in Scripture one of the two places where God would cause His name to dwell (Dt 12:11, Ezra 6:12, Neh 1:9; the other was Shiloh, Jer 7:12), even the city of the great king (Ps 48:2, Mt 5:35). Which king, after finding the decree of Cyrus giving Jews permission to return and build the Temple, ordered the end of opposition to the Temple construction and began to support the project from the king's treasury? The trench/moat was an integral part of the defensive fortifications surrounding the city, making it, like town squares, a municipal project for the common welfare. In a word, yes. 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. Cyrus issued a decree that exiles should return and rebuild, just as Isaiah had prophesied two centuries earlier (Isaiah 44:28). 1:1-3; 2:1) as the decree that should provide the starting date of the prophecy (see, e.g., Robert Anderson, The Coming Prince [Grand Rapids: KregelPub., n.d.]). They were waiting to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. With that done, the 457 BC date will be regarded as established. An attempt to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem was made after Artaxerxes I of Persia became king (465-464 to 424-23 BC). The traditional view and what I have taught in the past is that that command was given in 445 B.C. . There was nothing indirect or oblique about this. Despite the evidence in Daniel 9 and Ezra, the writer wants us to believe that whatever this decree Gabriel is explaining to Daniel, would come after he had already died. 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. The first day of the seventh month of the year Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem was Tishri 1, 444 BC. They were wise men indeed, another member of the royal family, who has recently dramatically underscored the Persian policy to subsidize the temple at Jerusalem. 9:24-27 differs from modern scholarship in two significant ways. Note well that there is no reference to any decree, any edict, any promulgated word from the king in this passage. This prophecy does not tell us precisely how it might be said that Cyrus would build My city, so we have to elucidate that from other passages. 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. Therefore, when it speaks of the restoration of the city, Daniel 9:25 is referring to Ezras work. Some list a fourth decree based on what is recorded in Nehemiah 1. And there went up also to Jerusalem, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king, some of the people of Israel, and some of the priests and Levites, the singers and gatekeepers, and the temple servant 6 Atunci, mpratul Darius a dat porunc s se fac cercetri n casa scrisorilor unde se puneau vistieriile n Babilon. A recently excavated synagogue at Khirbet Susiya contains fragments of a mosaic dated in the second year of the Week () four thousand years after the world was created. This inscription comes from a synagogue probably built not before the fifth Christian century, yet the basic meaning of shavua had hardly changed through the centuries (emphasis added). It was in this time frame, specifically in 457 B.C., the seventh year of Artaxerxes (see verses 7-8) that the king gave permission to Ezra to lead a band of exiles back to Jerusalem. 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. 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. Daniel 9:25 continues: "from the issuing of a decree 1 Book 5, pp. It may bring to decree rebuild. We see this event recorded in Matthew 21:1-11. The question, then, is who gave the word, in order or command, to begin the reconstruction of Jerusalem? Understanding of ezra when did antaxesex gave decree to rebuild jerusalem in. ( Dan.9:25 ) The illustration of Nehemiah. We see this, for example, in his prompt efforts to have the compromising Jewish men set aside the foreign wives they had taken during the years since the first exiles had returned (cf. Daniel 9:25 states that the 'seventy weeks' (generally interpreted as 490 years according to the day-year principle) is to begin "from the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem," which is when the Persian king Artaxerxes I, gave the decree to rebuild Jerusalem to Ezra, so the 490 years point to the . Nehemiah was the cupbearer to King Artaxerxes I at a time when Judah in Palestine had been partly repopulated by Jews released from their exile in Babylonia. Then the king sent an answer issue a decree to make these men stop work, that this city may not be rebuilt until a decree is issued by me. Then work on the house of God in Jerusalem ceased, and it was stopped until the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia (emphasis added). 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. The three main leaders of this time were Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah. The answer from the above examination of the letter of the western governors is obvious. charuwts), even in times of distress. The word here translated plaza conveys the idea of streets that make up a town square (cf. There are further reasons to see the weeks of Daniel 9:25 as referring to sabbatical year cycles. Bear with me for a moment while I make a seeming digression. Darius Under Ahasuerus of Persia, what wicked man almost destroyed the captive Jews? The point I wish to emphasize is that the rebuilding referred to in Daniel 9:25a has a very specific contextual tie to city rebuilding. Ezras Reforms were Part of the Fulfillment of Daniel 9:25. You, however, I will scatter among the nations and will draw out a sword after you, as your land becomes desolate and your cities become waste. Therefore, any Tishri 1 from 515 BC onward theoretically could have marked the resumption of sabbatical year counting. 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. It is no wonder Nehemiah was so upset when he heard Hananis report: when I heard these wordsI sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven (Neh 1:4, emphasis added). Now we will dig a bit more deeply into Daniel 9:25, for there is additional light we can derive from that verse which gives a more complete understanding of its implications. It gives the starting year of the prophecy recorded in Daniel 9:25, 26. In Israel, the sowing of the winter crops (barley and wheat) takes place in approximately November and reaping takes place in the spring. By extension, the idea that the complaint of Tabeel et al was not submitted to Artaxerxes until after Ezra arrived in 457 BC with his small group is unworkable. 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. Cyrus' decree had permitted them to rebuild the temple, not the city. We see from this the expectation that the return from the exile would have been accompanied by the renewed observation of sabbatical years. 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. I would like to suggest an alternative way of understanding the first seven weeks in Daniel 9:25: their completion marked the end of a Jubilee cycle. 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). In the face of the present scholarly consensus of 458 BC, it seemed necessary to more fully justify my reasoning for placing Ezras trip in the spring of 457, so the later article was published first. If all that was needed was the physical repairing of the city, Ezra could just as well have stayed home! 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). He gave them permission - as a messenger . '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! For instance, on pp. When these several Scriptures are considered together, they inform us that from Gods perspective, Cyrus was His instrument to initiate the rebuilding of both the Temple and the city of Jerusalem. Because Daniel 9:25 informs us that God did not merely intend to rebuild the city but also to restore it, we must include the arrival of Ezra in Jerusalem and the initiation of his religious reforms as an integral part of the going forth of Cyrus decree. Hence I believe we can be confident, based on the information derived from the above Scriptures, that the decree referred to in Daniel 9:25 had to be that issued by Artaxerxes I Longimanus shortly before Ezras departure for Jerusalem in the spring of 457 BC. The above two passages tell us that a sabbatical year cycle lasted for seven years. Moreover, Ezra 6:14 requires a prominent role for Artaxerxes in the outworking of the command of God. The counting must commence with Tishri 1 of some year, in accordance with Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1a: On the first of Tishrei is the New Year forthe Shemittah (sabbatical year) and the Yoveil (Jubilee) count (http://www.emishnah.com/moed2/Rosh_HaShanah/1.pdf). Now I, King Artaxerxes, decree that all the treasurers of Trans-Euphrates are to provide with diligence whatever Ezra the priest, the teacher of the Law of the God of heaven, may ask of you . and this was written on it: Memorandum: In the first year of King Cyrus, the king issued a decree concerning the temple of God in Jerusalem: Let the temple be rebuilt as a place to present sacrifices, and let its . 2 Chronicles 36:2023: Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persiain order to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiahthe LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he sent a proclamation [Heb. At that point, Nehemiah led the charge to reinforce the gates of the temple and to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, which took 49 years and equates to the first 7-week period. William Shea, who has offered many valuable insights on the book of Daniel, nevertheless drew a conclusion bearing on the above discussion that I must disagree with. For this reason it appears Shea is mistaken here. We find in Deuteronomy 31:1012 that such public reading of the Law was prescribed to be done at the start of a sabbatical year, normally during the Feast of Booths (Tishri 1521) in the fall, although Tishri 1, Rosh Hashanah, was also set apart for special observation (Lev 23:2425: Speak to the people of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a day of solemn rest, a memorial proclaimed with blast of trumpets, a holy convocation). The decree comes from the seventh year of Artaxerxes (Ezra 7:8). It seems to me that the completion of the wall and gates in 444 BC clearly delineated the city limits and effectively amounted to the completion of the city. 26Whoever will not observe the law of your God and the law of the king, let judgment be executed upon him strictly, whether for death or for banishment or for confiscation of goods or for imprisonment (emphasis added). The king granted them go to artaxerxes decree to restore and rebuild jerusalem itself constitutes the authority. Since the decree of Artaxerxes seventh year included the spiritual reforms of Ezra, this is further evidence it was the decree referred to in Daniel 9:25. Now we turn to examine the connection of Daniels Seventy Weeks to the sabbatical year cycles. 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. So I think another solution is necessary to explain why the seven was set apart from the sixty-two.. Haman It is His will, not simply Cyruss. 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. is from the 1885 Bible. 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. to interpret them. appearing before Artaxerxes. Artaxerxes had to face a revolt in Egypt in 460-454 BC led by Inaros II, who was the son of a Libyan prince named Psamtik, presumably descended from the Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt. After the 62 7s the Anointed One would . Is there any evidence this was the case? 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. 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. Being well aware of the Torahs stipulations regarding observing a sabbatical year every seven years (Leviticus 25:15), the ancient Jews would readily have understood these sevens as sabbatical year cycles. 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. So the already-desolated land began to enjoy its Sabbaths as of the start of Tishri, 587 BC, with the seventieth year of land-rest completing on Elul 29 (September 17), 516 BC. 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. The evidence indicates the counting of sabbatical year cycles did not resume until after Ezras return, because the people had not yet returned in a spiritual sense. 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. The final part of the verse specifically calls the readers attention to the period of rebuilding, and this is likely what the seven weeks refers to. Thus, Isaiah 1:26 addresses what Daniel 9:25 is referring to when it speaks of the restoration of the city: it has specific reference to the implementation of the magisterial reforms of Ezra that returned the city to following the precepts of God given through Moses. A second difference stems from the first. We know from history that the command to "restore and rebuild Jerusalem" was given by King Artaxerxes of Persia c. 444 B.C. The ancient exegetes, it will be shown, understood shavua to refer to the seven-year cycle, the last year of which was the year of the Lord (Lev. 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. How to Sell Decree To Rebuild Jerusalem Artaxerxes to a Skeptic. And let the cost be paid from the royal treasury. The passage in Isaiah 1:26 is a prophecy of what Ezra would do. And they finished building according to the command of the God of Israel and the [singular] decree of Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia (brackets added). This fact emphasizes that the sabbatical years significance was fundamentally a spiritual matter, a sign of the people keeping covenant with their God, rather than simply giving the land a break. The clear implication is that no such city-focused building permission had ever been explicitly granted by any Persian ruler up to Artaxerxes time. 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). 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