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Journey of a Passage

2 Chronicles 36:21

Seventy years and the land's sabbaths

Chronicles joins Jeremiah's seventy years with Leviticus 26's promise that the land would enjoy its missed sabbaths. The text is stable; the reckoning of the seventy years is debated.

Stable text: no manuscript differences in meaning

The family tree

Each row is a language or text tradition. Witnesses in the same row may share ancestry, revise one another, or have an uncertain relationship; the line under each box says which. A solid arrow appears only where direct copying or a documented revised edition is established. Order by date never implies copying. Scroll sideways on a phone.

✓ contains this verse · ▢ pages lost · – no copy survives

  • Same line, through lost copies
  • Translation
Hebrew
  1. Leviticus 26:34–35 (parallel account, Masoretic Text)Torah
  2. Jeremiah 25:11–12; 29:10 (parallel account, Masoretic Text)Jeremiah
  3. Original ChroniclesComposed c. 4th century BC (debated)
  4. Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)AD 1008Descends, through lost copies, from Original Chronicles
Greek
  1. Septuagint, 2 Paraleipomena (library text: Giguet's French)Translated c. 2nd century BCTranslated from a Hebrew text of Chronicles
Latin
    English
    1. King James Bible1611Translated from printed Masoretic Hebrew

    Every witness, in order

    1. Torah

      Leviticus 26:34–35 (parallel account, Masoretic Text)

      ✓ Contains this passage

      How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex, quoted here in English.

      Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate

    2. Jeremiah

      Jeremiah 25:11–12; 29:10 (parallel account, Masoretic Text)

      ✓ Contains this passage

      How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex, quoted here in English.

      these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years

    3. Composed c. 4th century BC (debated)

      Original Chronicles

      – No copy survives

      No original survives.

    4. Translated c. 2nd century BC

      Septuagint, 2 Paraleipomena (library text: Giguet's French)

      ✓ Contains this passageTranslated from a Hebrew text of Chronicles

      How the site knows this: Known here only through a translation.

      que la terre jouît de ses sabbats… jusqu'à l'achèvement de soixante-dix ans

      One Greek text (Vaticanus type) via Giguet's French; not checked against a critical Greek edition.

    5. AD 1008

      Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)

      ✓ Contains this passageDescends, through lost copies, from Original Chronicles

      How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex.

      עַד־רָצְתָה הָאָרֶץ אֶת־שַׁבְּתוֹתֶיהָ… לְמַלֹּאות שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה

      until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths… to fulfil seventy years

    6. 1611

      King James Bible

      ✓ Contains this passageTranslated from printed Masoretic Hebrew

      How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: King James Version (1769 text).

      until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths… to fulfil threescore and ten years

    What changed, and why

    Reckonings: 605 BC (first deportation) to 536/535 BC (return); 586 BC (temple destroyed) to 516 BC (second temple dedicated); or a round figure for a lifetime of Babylonian dominance (609/605–539 BC). Daniel 9 reinterprets the seventy years as seventy weeks of years.

    What the evidence shows

    • Independently documentedChronicles combines Jeremiah's seventy years and Leviticus 26.
    • DisputedThe seventy years are an exact count.

    Sources

      Related lessons

      • Judah's Last Kings, the Fall and Cyrus' Proclamation →In quick succession Jehoahaz is deposed by Necho, Jehoiakim is taken by Nebuchadnezzar, Jehoiachin is exiled, and Zedekiah rebels and will not humble himself before Jeremiah. God sends messengers "rising up betimes," but they mock them "till there was no remedy." The Chaldeans kill young and old, burn the temple and break down the walls; survivors go to Babylon "to fulfil the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths… seventy years." Then Cyrus king of Persia proclaims: build the house in Jerusalem; "let him go up."