This was Ezras calling. 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). Artaxerxes, but this would be just a supposition. Isaiah 44:24, 26, 28: Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, I, the LORD, am the maker of all things It is I who says [Heb. Then Darius the king made a decree, and search was made in the house of the rolls, where the treasures were laid up in Babylon Ezra 7:1,8,11-26 Now after these things, in the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, Ezra the son of Seraiah, the son of Azariah, the son of Hilkiah, restore and to build Jerusalem. Daniel 9:25 continues: "from the issuing of a decree Certainly the city continued to grow over time and Nehemiah likely played a role in promoting that, but all cities continue to add homes and businesses as the years pass, and who is to say when such building is concluded? Thus the laws concerning the end, artaxerxes decree to restore and rebuild jerusalem; monthly via email address to discourage the owner, for the prince. Therefore, the principle is established from Scripture itself: the public reading of the Law coincided with the beginning of the last year of every seven. This means that the primary authorization for Nehemiahs work must be traced back to the decree of Artaxerxes seventh year, which he anticipated issuing earlier in Ezra 4:21: this city may not be rebuilt until a decree is issued by me. There was no known decree between the time that statement was made and Nehemiahs arrival, except that of Ezra 7:11 ff, the decree which King Artaxerxes gave to Ezra the priest, the scribe. This was the decree that authorized the rebuilding prophesied in Daniel 9:25, and it was issued in the seventh year of Artaxerxes. 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. In a word, yes. 2 Samuel 15:25 In order to fully elucidate the meaning of Daniel 9:25, we must thus appreciate the significance of the words translated restore (Heb. The first unit of 49 years (seven "sevens") covers the time that it took to rebuild Jerusalem, "with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble" (Daniel 9:25). So it pleased the king to send me; and I set him a time. 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. It reads: Now listen and understand! Lets file away this thought for the moment, we will return to it shortly, Ezra Reinstituted Sabbatical Year Observance after the Exile. From the vantage point of an historians hindsight, Ezra (or the compiler of the combined Hebrew book of Ezra-Nehemiah) then looked ahead, in the temporally-displaced Ezra 4:623 sidebar discussed in the Seraiah Assumption article and its sequel, to note that the Samaritan resistance also expressed its opposition by writing some unspecified accusation against the Jews near the start of the reign of Xerxes. 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.. 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. This is somewhere around 458 BC from what we know of Artaxerxes' reign from outside sources. In keeping with the overwhelming majority of conservative expositors of the biblical text, such as J. Paul Tanner (Is Daniels Seventy-Weeks Prophecy Messianic? The Weeks of Daniel 9:25 were Sabbatical Year Cycles. , He was a scribe who had prepared his heart to seek the Law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel. Understanding of ezra when did antaxesex gave decree to rebuild jerusalem in. Ezra blesses God for this favor. 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. Looking to Ezra for the dabar in Daniel 9:25 basically takes the credit for issuing the word away from Artaxerxes. The passage even refers to this rebuilding taking place in times of distress, which is a perfect description of the period of opposition by the Samaritans that began years before Nehemiah arrived. Is it possible to say so? 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. to interpret them. Sabbatical and Jubilee years therefore started in Tishri, the month in which the Jewish Rosh HaShanah or New Years Day was celebrated in the past and is celebrated in our own day. . The prophecy thus stipulates that, from the issuing of the correct decree, seven septennates49 years, as in a Jubilee cycle (Lev 25:8)plus an additional 62 septennates434 yearswould pass before an anointed one would come to the Jews. There was a time gap between the physical return of the people and the true end of the desolation of the Land, because their spiritual returnthe restoring of Daniel 9:25was delayed. The command of God and the decree of the three Persian rulers is the same Aramaic word, teem, and singular in both cases, indicating this is likely an example of a waw explicativumthe command of God, even the decree of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes, as A. Philip Brown II suggested (see my previous article). Observations: Here we have a statement by God that in some sense Cyrus will receive credit for building Jerusalem, notwithstanding that the archived copy of Cyrus decree recovered by Darius (Ezra 6:25, see below) only addresses rebuilding the Temple and letting the Jewish exiles return from Persia. Moreover, the observance of these regular cycles was a non-negotiable requirement of the Law laid upon the Jews: You shall do these things, said the Almighty. If your kinsman, a Hebrew man or woman, is sold to you, then he shall serve you six years, but in the seventh year you shall set him free. Seven sets of seven plus sixty-two sets of seven will pass from the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until a rulerthe Anointed Onecomes. 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. "Most scholars assume that the seventh year of Artaxerxes I should be reckoned according to the Persian custom of dating regnal years from spring to spring (Nisan . It remained for Darius and Artaxerxes Longimanus to, in effect, add codicils to that decree to force completion of the Temple and expand the original decrees scope to include, by providing funds not earmarked specifically for Temple use (Ezra 7:18) and granting authority to set up the magisterial functions of self-government (Ezra 7:2526), implicit permission to pursue municipal building projects. 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. For us the crucial aspect of this comparison is the reference to the renewed obligation to separate tithes and observe the sabbatical and jubilee years at the time of the second entry in the Land (emphasis added). 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. Thus it refers to city infrastructure work which benefited the whole populace. facebook twitter youtube instagram newsletter Search. Nehemiah rebuilding Jerusalem, illustration by Adolf Hult, 1919 Nehemiah is the central figure of the Book of Nehemiah, which describes his work in rebuilding Jerusalem during the Second Temple period. From the Desk of Dr. Bryant G. Wood: Has Bethsaida Been Discovered? Ezra goes up to Jerusalem 11. ABR fulfills its mission through memberships and generous donations from supporters. Artaxerxes was the second son of Xerxes, who was murdered in the summer of 465 by his all-powerful vizir Artaban. The Gesenius lexicon reproduced on the BlueLetterBible website (http://www.blbclassic.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H1129&t=NASB) makes this fundamental meaning very clear: to build, to erect, as a house, a temple, a city, walls, defenses. In Daniel 9:25, the second half of the verse shows the term has particular reference to municipal projects. 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. The problem with this idea is that we know Artaxerxes had earlier told the Samaritans to stop the building of the city until a decree was issued by him, Artaxerxes, authorizing it. Given how clear Cyrus permission had been to rebuild the Temple, this complaint must have focused on something other than Temple construction. The three main leaders of this time were Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah. He was governor of Persian Judea under Artaxerxes I of Persia (465-424 BC). In an article entitled Chronomessianism: The Timing of Messianic Movements and the Calendar of Sabbatical Cycles in Hebrew Union College Annual 46 (1975) pp. Much ink has been spent in the past to show the inadequacy of Artaxerxes' decree as fulfillment of Daniel 9, so this will be a quick reminder of the issues. 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. 25:2), the equivalent of the year of shemittah or release (Deut. As Benedict Zuckermann, creator of the most widely-followed sabbatical year cycle formulation (published in his Treatise on the Sabbatical Cycle and the Jubilee, trans. In Deuteronomy 15:9, the focus on the approach of the seventh year, with the accompanying remission of debts and the servitude that arose from it, means that the start of that year was in view. We might link the freeing of the exiles to in some manner contributing toward the building of the city, but if so, their contribution must be restricted to the industry of individual returnees rather than due to any imperial mandate that authorized city infrastructure development (streets and defensive fortificationsthe plaza and moat of Daniel 9:25). 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. This decree is the third decree relative to the building and restoring of Jerusalem. The difference between the two interpretations is that, according to the former, any septennial number will do; according to the latter, however, each seven-year period had its fixed place in a series, precise in beginning and end. It is His will, not simply Cyruss. Bear with me for a moment while I make a seeming digression. Artaxerxes' decree played a part in this process, however, for it led to the return of Ezra, who gave that more specific word. Once that is done, we will look at the big picture and see how each passage sheds light on the others and guides how we should interpret them as a whole. 2 i s-a gsit la Ahmeta, ca Desiring to let the Scriptures speak plainly and govern our understanding, several passages will first be set forth that teach the principle of sabbatical year observance. Since no new decree was issued to facilitate the work of Nehemiah, only letters, the latters work starting in 444 BC should be understood as implementing what had already been permitted by Artaxerxes, yet not put into effect due to the people being cowed by continued Samaritan opposition. Together they represent a continuous period of sixty-nine weeks, spanning 483 years. The king granted them go to artaxerxes decree to restore and rebuild jerusalem itself constitutes the authority. The decree comes from the seventh year of Artaxerxes (Ezra 7:8). Sabbatical Year Cycles were Reset After the Exile. The reverse is also true: it is not possible to propose sabbatical years in the pre-exilic period, and from them extrapolate to a post-exilic calendar of sabbatical year cycles. Further Exegetical Details from Daniel 9:25. The Commandment to Restore and to Build Jerusalem John. There was nothing indirect or oblique about this. A second difference stems from the first. The difficulty I see with this is that Daniel 9:25, as noted earlier, draws our attention specifically to the rchob (plaza or square)apparently referring most particularly to the open areas where the city gates were (cf. God foretold to the day when Messiah would present Himself to Israel as their Messiah-King. For this reason it appears Shea is mistaken here. 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. As Nehemiah 8:12, 8 records: And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate. 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. 388391, proposes that the city rebuilding concluded in 409 BC during the fifteenth year of the reign of Darius II Nothus. This article in the series of studies on Daniel 9:2427 was essentially completed prior to the most recently published piece on the ABR website, Did Ezra Come to Jerusalem in 457 BC? (https://biblearchaeology.org/abr-projects-main/the-daniel-9-24-27-project-2/4549-did-ezra-come-to-jerusalem-in-457-bc). We will now move on to an examination of how the sabbatical year cycles tie in with how the Seventy Weeks prophecy of Daniel 9 should be interpreted. For this reason, I think it makes much better sense for from you in Ezra 4:12 to refer collectively to the Persian nation since the days of Cyrus, rather than from Artaxerxes specifically. If the Sabbatical and Jubilee years started in Nisan, then the crop sown in the preceding fall could not be harvested, after which the fall sowing would be missed, thus resulting in two years without harvest rather than the one year that is intended in the legislation. 18Whatever seems good to you and to your brothers to do with the rest of the silver and gold, you may do according to the will of your God. 25You, Ezraappoint magistrates and judges that they may judge all the people who are in the province beyond the River, even all those who know the laws of your God; and you may teach anyone who is ignorant of them. 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