This is what the Lord says: “You will be in Babylon for seventy years. But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again.
Parallel translations
- WEB For Yahweh says, “After seventy years are accomplished for Babylon, I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.
- KJV For thus saith the LORD, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.
- BSB For this is what the LORD says: “When Babylon’s seventy years are complete, I will attend to you and confirm My promise to restore you to this place.
- NKJV For thus says the Lord: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place.
- NASB “For this is what the Lord says: ‘When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
God promises that after seventy years He will visit His people and bring them home. The exile has a fixed end and a sure restoration.
Overview
God sets a definite term to the captivity and pledges to fulfill His 'good word' of return, accomplished when the exiles came back under Cyrus (Ezra 1; 2 Chronicles 36:21-22). Daniel later prayed over this very promise (Daniel 9:2). The seventy years balanced discipline with certain hope. God's faithfulness to keep His word here assures believers that all His promises, climaxing in Christ, will surely be performed.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 9
- Dan 9:2in the first year of his reign I, Daniel, understood by the books the number of the years about which Yahweh’s word came to Jeremiah the prophet, for the accomplishing of the desolations of Jerusalem, even seventy years.
- Zech 7:5“Speak to all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh month for these seventy years, did you at all fast to me, really to me?
- Jer 24:6–7For I will set my eyes on them for good, and I will bring them again to this land. I will build them, and not pull them down. I will plant them, and not pluck them up.
- Jer 27:22‘They shall be carried to Babylon, and there shall they be, until the day that I visit them,’ says Yahweh; ‘then I will bring them up, and restore them to this place.’”
- Jer 25:12“It shall happen, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation,” says Yahweh, “for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans; and I will make it desolate forever.
- Jer 32:42–44For Yahweh says: “Like as I have brought all this great evil on this people, so will I bring on them all the good that I have promised them.
- Zeph 2:7The coast will be for the remnant of the house of Judah. They will find pasture. In the houses of Ashkelon, they will lie down in the evening, for Yahweh, their God, will visit them, and restore them.
- 2 Chr 36:21to fulfill Yahweh’s word by Jeremiah’s mouth, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. As long as it lay desolate, it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.
- Jer 27:7All the nations will serve him, and his son, and his son’s son, until the time of his own land comes. Then many nations and great kings will make him their bondservant.
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Christ at the center
Against the failure of false shepherds Jeremiah promises the Righteous Branch, 'The LORD our righteousness,' and the new covenant written on the heart and sealed in the blood of Christ.
How Jeremiah 29:10 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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