Ancestry of Joash

David's royal line was preserved when Jehosheba hid the child Joash so that Athaliah the queen could not kill him.

The marriage of Jehoshaphat's son to Ahab's daughter linked together the royal families of Israel and Judah. As a result, all the kings of Judah thereafter would be descended, not only from David, but from Ahab and Jezebel as well. And Matthew chapter 1 presents Jesus as an heir to that line of kings in Judah.

The Bible does not say that Jehosheba was the daughter of Athaliah, but only that she was the daughter of Jehoram of Judah.

Understanding the Judgment

Ark of the Covenant

Statements by Ellen White on where the Ark of the Covenant is now and its eventual discovery:

“Before the temple was destroyed, God made known to a few of His faithful servants the fate of the temple…. These righteous men, just before the destruction of the temple, removed the sacred ark containing the tables of stone, and with mourning and sadness secreted it in a cave where it was to be hidden from the people of Israel because of their sins, and was to be no more restored to them. That sacred ark is yet hidden. It has never been disturbed since it was secreted.” The Story of Redemption, p. 195

“Among the righteous still in Jerusalem, to whom had been made plain the divine purpose, were some who determined to place beyond the reach of ruthless hands the sacred ark containing the tables of stone on which had been traced the precepts of the Decalogue. This they did. With mourning and sadness they secreted the ark in a cave, where it was to be hidden from the people of Israel and Judah because of their sins, and was to be no more restored to them. That sacred ark is yet hidden. It has never been disturbed since it was secreted.” Prophets and Kings, p. 453

“ ‘And He gave unto Moses, when He had made an end of communicating with him upon Mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written by the finger of God.’ Nothing written on those tables could be blotted out. The precious record of the law was placed in the ark of the testament and is still there, safely hidden from the human family. But in God’s appointed time He will bring forth these tables of stone to be a testimony to all the world against the disregard of His commandments and against the idolatrous worship of a counterfeit Sabbath.” MS 122, 1901; SDA Bible Commentary, Vol. 1, p. 1109

“There are abundant evidences of the immutability of God’s law. It was written with the finger of God, never to be obliterated, never to be destroyed. The tables of stone are hidden by God, to be produced in the great judgment-day, just as He wrote them.” Review and Herald, March 26, 1908; SDA Bible Commentary, Vol. 1, p. 1109

“When the judgment shall sit, and the books shall be opened, and every man shall be judged according to the things written in the books, then the tables of stone, hidden by God until that day, will be presented before the world as the standard of righteousness. Then men and women will see that the prerequisite of their salvation is obedience to the perfect law of God. None will find excuse for sin. By the righteous principles of that law, men will receive their sentence of life or of death.” Review and Herald, Jan. 28, 1909; SDA Bible Commentary, Vol. 1, p. 1109

“These tables of stone will be brought forth from their hiding place, and on them will be seen the Ten Commandments engraved by the finger of God. These tables of stone now lying in the Ark of the testimony will be a convincing testimony to the truth and binding claims of God’s law.” Letter 47, 1902.

Ministry vs. Office

Into the Looking Glass

Seventy Years of Captivity

Why did God, through Jeremiah, decree 70 years of Babylonian captivity for His people, as Daniel learned in Daniel 9:2?

According to Leviticus 26:34, 35 and 2 Chronicles 36:21, the length of the captivity was to allow the land to enjoy all the sabbath-rest years it had not been allowed during Israel’s years of apostasy.

How many years of apostasy would it take to miss 70 sabbath-rest years? Every seventh year was to be a rest year for the land (Leviticus 25:4). In addition, on every 50th year (Leviticus 25:10, 11), called the jubilee, the land was to rest as well. That 50th year was actually the first year of the next 49-year cycle.

With 8 sabbath-rest years (7 sabbatical years plus 1 jubilee year) to be observed for every jubilee cycle of 49 years, it would mathematically take at least 8.75 jubilee cycles, or 428.75 years, to accumulate 70 sabbath-rest years. The period of apostasy would have to be fewer than 434.875 years (which is 8.875 jubilee cycles), because that would produce 71 sabbath-rest years. So for them to have missed exactly 70 Sabbath-rest years, their period of apostasy had to last somewhere in the range from 429 to 434 years.

Do we have a record of how many years of apostasy God’s people experienced? We do. In Ezekiel 4:4-6, the prophet was told to lie on his left side and bear the iniquity of the house of Israel 390 days. Then he was to lie on his right side and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah 40 days. “For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity” (v. 5). “I have appointed thee each day for a year” (v. 6). Thus the total period of the iniquity of Israel and Judah combined was 430 years. That would have resulted in exactly 70 sabbath-rest years that they ignored. Those untaken years of rest were now to be given to the land. God’s people would be exiled to Babylon for seventy years (Jeremiah 25:11, 12; 29:10).

This can be calculated in more than one way. For example, the ratio of Sabbath-rest years to regular years (8 to 49) is 1 to 6.125. Apply that ratio to the 430 years and round it to the nearest whole year:  430 ÷ 6.125 = 70.2 = 70 years.

Another way is to see the 8 sabbath-rest years per 49-year jubilee cycle as 16.3265306% of the time. The formula would then look like this:  430 x 0.163265306 = 70.2 = 70 years.

Early Medo-Persian Bible Chronology

The seventy years predicted by Jeremiah (Jeremiah 25:11, 12; Jeremiah 29:10) for the Babylonian captivity of the Jews extended from the taking of the first Jewish captives in 605 B.C. until 536 B.C. when the first group of Jews returned to Jerusalem. The Jews used inclusive reckoning, meaning that they included both the beginning and ending years in their count. It looks like Cyrus made his decree (Ezra 1:1-3) just before the close of his first year of reign according to the Jewish civil calendar. The earliest the Jews could leave would have been the following spring. Here is a suggested timeline of a few of the final years of Daniel's ministry. To keep it fairly simple, I have not defined accession years for Darius or Cyrus, using only the designations found in the Bible.