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Did the Bible Predict the Exact Year of Israel's Reestablishment?



Ezekiel 4 and 5 Spoke of Past Sin and Future Punishment Without Giving Years

In recent years a teaching surfaced that the time from Israel's Babylonian captivity until its restoration in our time was 2,520 years as predicted by the Bible. Ezekiel 4 mentioned the sin of Israel as 390 years and the sin of Judah as 40 years. Supposedly, they were to be punished a total of 430 years. At the end of Babylonian captivity they did not repent. In Leviticus 26:28 God warned Israel that if they were chastised but did not repent that they would be punished seven times for their sins. They had already served 70 years and had 360 years of punishment left which would now be multiplied by seven yielding 2,520 years. Using a prophetic calendar of 360 days and dividing by 365.25 days would produce a length of roughly 2,484 years as we account for it today. Starting with a date for the end of captivity of 536 BC, accounting for the fact the historically there was not a year 0, and then adding 2,483 years arrives at a year of 1948 when Israel was reborn.Here is where this interpretation differs from the Bible:

The Punishment Was 70 Years not 430

The length of sin was 430 years not the punishment. The passage in Ezekiel does refer to the number of years of Israel's sin. In Ezekiel 4:1-6 God commanded the prophet Ezekiel, "Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and portray upon it the city, even Jerusalem: And lay siege against it, and build a fort against it, and cast a mount against it; set the camp also against it, and set battering rams against it round about. Moreover take thou unto thee an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city: and set thy face against it, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel. Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity. For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year." This chapter commands Ezekiel to be a witness of the number of years Israel and Judah had sinned but is does not give a number of years that the they were to be punished. In fact Israel had already been dissolved. 2 Kings 18:9-11 shows us that, "And it came to pass in the fourth year of king Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, that Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up against Samaria, and besieged it. And at the end of three years they took it: even in the sixth year of Hezekiah, that is the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel, Samaria was taken. And the king of Assyria did carry away Israel unto Assyria, and put them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes:" The ten tribes of Israel were conquered approximately 132 years earlier. Israel, separate from Judah, was on a different timeline. Judah was to be punished 70 years for their sin not 430. The first problem is multiplying the sin by seven and not the punishment. Seven times seventy is 490 not 2,520.

The End of Captivity Was Around 451 BC not 536 BC

The second problem is that the end of the Babylonian captivity is placed per traditional standards but not according to the Bible. Instead of 536 BC, the year should be much closer to 451 BC. See The Age of the Earth for general chronology but more specifically the Seventy Weeks of Daniel concerning the details about this period.

The Prophetic Year Is not Real

Additionally the prophetic year is not valid. God has only one standard. The year is roughly 365.25 days long not 360. History and prophecy based on a 360 day year is wrong. See the Prophetic Year for more information.

Israel Partially Restored Prior to 1948 but not Fully Restored Until 1967

Finally, Israel was fully restored in 1967, not 1948. If partial restoration counted then Israel was restored in 1988 with an Aliyah, in 1917 with the Balfour Declaration, in 1922 with the San Remo Conference, and 1948 as well. See Other History for more detail.



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