king artaxerxes' decree to rebuild jerusalem

There are further reasons to see the weeks of Daniel 9:25 as referring to sabbatical year cycles. 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. This is an old section of the wall of. Ezra 910). Zerubbabel led the people in the reigns of the Persian kings Cyrus and Darius. 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). Then the land will enjoy its sabbaths all the days of the desolation, while you are in your enemies land; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. 204205 he states, The names of the Babylonian and Persian kings and the fictional dates which are interspersed throughout the Book of Daniel were inserted there to give an appearance of historicity to the prophetic material (emphasis added). As it is, take Ezras arrival in Jerusalem out of the picture, and its spiritual restoration gets only partly implemented at best. charuwts), even in times of distress. The word here translated plaza conveys the idea of streets that make up a town square (cf. 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. Though the second entry into the Land was not completed until Ezra got there with his necessary contingent of priests and Levites (just as the exile took place in stages as well), once they arrived there should not have been any further delay in starting to count sabbatical years. It may bring to decree rebuild. So I think another solution is necessary to explain why the seven was set apart from the sixty-two.. The decree comes from the seventh year of Artaxerxes (Ezra 7:8). Haman The Commandment to Restore and to Build Jerusalem John. Now in the reign of Ahasuerus [the Aramaic-translated name for Xerxes, not a title for Cambyses or Smerdis/Bardiya; see my previous article], in the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem. Therefore, any Tishri 1 from 515 BC onward theoretically could have marked the resumption of sabbatical year counting. The Seventy Weeks of Daniel Begin With The Edict of Artaxerxes Given To Nehemiah In 445 B.C. It amounted to God dropping us a hint as to how to interpret the prophecy. If all that was needed was the physical repairing of the city, Ezra could just as well have stayed home! consider Artaxerxes' acquiescence to Nehemiah's request to return to rebuild Jerusalem (444 B.C., Neh. Thus the going forth of the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem in Dan 9:25 was Ezras word, not the decree of Artaxerxes. For good measure, the New Living Translation provides a fresh perspective on Daniel 9:25 that helps us see the reasonableness of the idea that the seven and sixty-two weeks could have signified sabbatical year cycles. 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. It shall not seem hard to you when you set him free, for he has given you six years with double the service of a hired man; so the LORD your God will bless you in whatever you do.. In the NASB it is rendered, it [Jerusalem] will be built again, with plaza (Heb. 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. Part 2, Bibliotheca Sacra, JulySeptember 2009, p. 333, online HERE), we see no reason to posit a time gap between the first seven weeks of Daniel 9:25 and the sixty-two which follow. Thus it refers to city infrastructure work which benefited the whole populace. However, there is good reason for expressing two stages of time. '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! (see Nehemiah 2:1-8). Artaxerxes, but this would be just a supposition. Again, it seems more likely that the rebuilding referred to in the letter was done by those who returned with Ezra in the days of Artaxerxes I. Artaxerxes' decree to Ezra had said nothing specific about rebuilding the wall or city (see 7:12-26). Temple Mount Revisionism: Requiesce in pace! 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. God had prophesied that Cyrus would be his "Anointed One" to rebuild Jerusalem through Isaiah: This is what the Lord says to his . 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. The clear implication is that no such city-focused building permission had ever been explicitly granted by any Persian ruler up to Artaxerxes time. It would encompass the restoring and rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem, not restricted to rebuilding the Temple, so the decree as narrowly issued by Cyrus and Darius would not qualifyArtaxerxes broadened decree would. 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. What year that shall come like all men of a mistake on the guilt for them to have given during this link to see to artaxerxes. We know from history that the command to "restore and rebuild Jerusalem" was given by King Artaxerxes of Persia c. 444 B.C. An attempt to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem was made after Artaxerxes I of Persia became king (465-464 to 424-23 BC). In view are not literal weeks of seven days, but periods of seven years. Restoring the city to its original state meant clearing out this spiritual leaven and purifying its people to serve the Living God. 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. . 53BC King Cyrus issued a decree that the Jewish exiles were free to. Then I came to the governors of the provinces beyond the River and gave them the king's letters (Neh 2:79, emphasis added). 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 point I wish to emphasize is that the rebuilding referred to in Daniel 9:25a has a very specific contextual tie to city rebuilding. Nevertheless, from this assumption he then suggests the Jews who came up from you must refer to those who had arrived from Artaxerxes with Ezra in 457 BC. Some list a fourth decree based on what is recorded in Nehemiah 1. Daniel's prophecy of 69 weeks commences with a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, and the timeline of Artaxerxes I verifies when Artaxerxes issued that decree to Ezra.. For this reason it appears Shea is mistaken here. Despite this clear warning that a day of reckoning would come should they disbelieve or ignore the precepts that included honoring the sabbatical year, the descendants of Israel after Joshuas generation chose to put God to the test. . 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. 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.]). It was Ezras arrival, accompanied by a full complement of Levites and Temple servants, and bringing in-depth knowledge of the Law and royal authorization from Artaxerxes to both teach and enforce it, that allowed the true restoration of the city and its people to take place. On pp. 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. Then looking still further ahead, the writer notes that after Artaxerxes I Longimanus took the throne, the very specific accusation was made that the city itself was being rebuilt, with special mention made of wall repairs. Ezra 6:14: And the elders of the Jews were successful in building [the Temple] through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. 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. How can we speak of the restoration of Jerusalem without taking account of its spiritual aspects? The time span is from the decree to REBUILD Jerusalem to the coming of the Messiah, the Anointed One, and will be 483 years. There was nothing indirect or oblique about this. We make that conclusion because we know that Artaxerxes began to reign in Persia in 464 . What does 490 mean in the Bible? Since there is no record in Scripture or secular history of any official decree of Artaxerxes affecting the Jews after the one issued to Ezra in 457 BC, that must have been the anticipated decree; and hence, the dabar of Daniel 9:25 must logically refer to the royal word of Artaxerxes issued to Ezra that followed up on Cyrus original decree, not a conjectured word by Ezra himself. He was governor of Persian Judea under Artaxerxes I of Persia (465-424 BC). Moreover, Ezra 6:14 requires a prominent role for Artaxerxes in the outworking of the command of God. 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). 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. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crop, but during the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath rest, a sabbath to the LORD; you shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard (emphasis added). Nehemiah 2:1-8 "In the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the . With that done, the 457 BC date will be regarded as established. 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). God foretold to the day when Messiah would present Himself to Israel as their Messiah-King. This is consistent with the text of Leviticus 25, which for both Sabbatical and Jubilee years speaks of sowing before mentioning reaping. The gracious commission of Artaxerxes to Ezra 27. The high priests prior to Ezras arrival paid the most attention to getting the Temple rebuilt and reinstituting the Temple-based sacrificial system, with other stipulations of the Law given less attention. 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). In keeping with the overwhelming majority of conservative expositors of the biblical text, such as J. Paul Tanner (Is Daniels Seventy-Weeks Prophecy Messianic? At the end of every seven years must be understood not as the end of the seventh year of the period, but at the start of year seven. Artaxerxes I was the King of Persia during the time of Nehemiah and Ezra. 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. 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. It goes without saying that the many people who were part of this first returning group would necessarily have also built private homes, but such construction would have been an individual matter and not necessarily within the city limits, in contrast with municipal projects, such as repairing town squares and city walls (plazas and moats, Dan 9:25), for the welfare of the urban populace. 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. 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. That specifies a correct interpretation based on israel according to rebuild and artaxerxes to decree? TWO DECREES OF ARTAXERXES We have to choose between the two decrees of Artaxerxes. It was only after Ezra, the priest and scribe, came and began to teach and admonish the people that full obedience to all that the Law of Moses required was insisted upon. 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