Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on 2 Chronicles 36:20
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Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
He who remained from the sword, i.e., who had not been slain by the sword, had not fallen and died in war, Nebuchadnezzar carried away to Babylon into captivity; so that they became servants to him and to his sons, as Jeremiah ( Jer 27:7) prophesied, until the rise of the kingdom of the Persians. These last words also are an historical interpretation of the prophecy, Jer 27:7. All this was done ( Ch2 36:21) to fulfil (מלּאת instead of מלּא, as in Ch1 29:5), that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, he having prophesied ( Jer 25:11., Ch2 29:10) the seventy years' duration of Judah's desolation and the Babylonian captivity, while the king and people had not regarded his words ( Ch2 36:12). This period, which according to Ch2 36:20 came to an end with the rise of the kingdom of the Persians, is characterized by the clause וגו רצתה עד as a time of expiation of the wrong which had been done the land by the non-observance of the sabbath-years, upon the basis of the threatening ( Lev 26:34), in which the wasting of the land during the dispersion of the unrepentant people among the heathen was represented as a compensation for the neglected sabbaths. From this passage in the law the words are taken, to show how the Lord had inflicted the punishment with which the disobedient people had been threatened as early as in the time of Moses. רצתה עד is not to be translated, "until the land had made up its years of rest;" that signification רצה has not; but, "until the land had enjoyed its sabbath-years," i.e., until it had enjoyed the rest of which it had been deprived by the non-observance of the sabbaths and the sabbath-years, contrary to the will of its Creator; see on Lev 26:34. That this is the thought is placed beyond doubt by the succeeding circumstantial clause, taken word for word from Lev 26:34 : "all days (i.e., the whole time) of its desolation did it hold it" (שׁבתה, it kept sabbath). "To make full the seventy years;" which Jeremiah, ll. cc., had prophesied. This connecting of Jeremiah's prophecy with the declaration in Lev 26:34 does not justify us in supposing that the celebration of the sabbath-year had been neglected seventy times, or that for a period of 490 years the sabbath-year had not been observed. Bertheau, holding this view, fixes upon 1000 b.c., i.e., the time of Solomon, or, as we cannot expect any very great chronological exactitude, the beginning of the kingly government in Israel, as the period after which the rest-years ceased to be regarded. He is further of opinion that Ch2 35:18 harmonizes with this view; according to which passage the passover was not celebrated in accordance with the prescription of the law until the end of the period of the judges. According to this chronological calculation, the beginning of this neglect of the observance of the sabbath-year would fall in the beginning of the judgeship of Samuel. (Note: The seventy years' exile began in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, i.e., in the year 606 b.c., or 369 years after the division of the kingdom; see the Chronol. Tables at 1 Kings 12 (ii. 3, S. 141), to which the eighty years of the reigns of David and Solomon, and the time of Saul and Samuel, must be added to make up the 490 years (see the comment. on Judges).) But this is itself unlikely; and still more unlikely is it, that in the time of the judges the sabbath-year had been regularly observed until Samuel; and that during the reigns of the kings David, Solomon, Jehosha…
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