The 70th Jubilee Cycle

It has been shown in another reference page that God called the children of Israel out of Egypt in the spring of 1437 BC. Two weeks before the Exodus, The Lord said to Moses, "This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year." Within two years after that, the Lord had commanded Israel concerning the weekly cycles of years and the jubilee cycles, which were built on the weekly cycles.

The number 70 is significant in the Bible: The Lord allowed Israel to violate 70 of the land's sabbaths before sending them into exile in Babylon (2 Chronicles 36:21). The Lord allocated 70 weeks of years to Israel to fulfill the ministry he had given them on earth (Daniel 9:24).

Even though the Bible does not mention the number 70 in connection with the jubilee cycles, it is reasonable to investigate the possible implications of there being a total of 70 jubilee cycles.

Since the Exodus is calculated to have occurred in the spring of 1437 BC, we can easily determine when the 70th jubilee cycle came to an end. A new cycle began every 49 years, so, multiplying 49 by 70, we get 3,430 years. Since the jubilee year was the 50th year of one cycle and also the first year of the next cycle, the 70th jubilee cycle ended with the 3,430th year after the Exodus. To find out what year that is, subtract 1437 from 3430 and add 1 (since there was no year 0), which yields a difference of 1994. The 70th jubilee year, then, was 1994/1995, meaning that it began in the spring of 1994 and ended in the spring of 1995. (The calendar the Lord gave Israel went from spring to spring.)

We believe this year to be accurate; if it is not, then we are not off by a matter of just a few years: we are off by a multiple of 49 years. The year itself is directly calculated from 1437 BC, which, based on a combination of Bible records, a couple of historical dates, and basic arithmetic, appears to have been the year of the Exodus. The year is also a mutilple of 49 years after other known jubilee years.

The Bible describes Hezekiah's 14th and 15th years as two consecutive years of rest for the land. We have already seen that these years were 703/702 and 702/701 BC. The spring of 702 BC was the beginning of a jubilee year. Therefore, if 1994/1995 is calculated correctly, it should be an exact multiple of 49 from 702/701 BC. From 702 BC to 1994, there are 2695 years, and 2695 is exactly 55 times 49.

If there were a total of 70 jubilee cycles, then the jubilee cycles and the weeks of years on which they were based are no longer operating. This is significant in the study of prophecy because of the implications it has for whether a day is interpreted as a year or as a literal day. The 70 weeks of Daniel 9 were weeks of years, and they were "cut off" from the 2,300 evenings-mornings, which, therefore, were also based on years rather than days. This indicates that the weekly cycles of years extended at least until the end of the 2,300 evenings-mornings, or 1844. Any time prophecy in Daniel or Revelation that fell within that period was counted using years instead of days. What about the prophecies in Daniel and Revelation that haven't been fulfilled yet? Although Seventh-day Adventists in general believe that there are no more time prophecies until the millennium, all agree that the millennium is a literal 1,000 years. (No one has suggested the possibility that the millennium might be a literal 360,000 years.)

It is reasonable to believe that there were a total of 70 jubilee cycles, because this would be consistent with the patterns of 70 explicitly given in the Bible, and it would given a solid explanation of why historical time prophecies are counted using years for days but future time prophecies should be counted using literal days.