The Weeks of Years

The weeks of years, which God established when he brought Israel out of Egypt (Leviticus 25:1-7) are easy to synchronize. In Daniel 9, Gabriel lays out a 70-week time period, which begins with the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem and ends with the coming of the Anointed One at the beginning of the 70th week.

Ezra 7 records the decree, issued in seventh year of king Artexerxes. In the account, the king gave Ezra the letter, and Ezra started out for Jerusalem at the very beginning of the year--on the first day of the first month. The year was 457 BC.

The calendar God gave to Israel extended from spring to spring. It was in the spring that God brought them out of Egypt, and he indicated that "This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year" (Exodus 12:1). Therefore, in synchronizing the weeks of years, each year of the week runs from spring to spring.

The first year of the 70 weeks, then, was the spring of 457 BC to the spring of 456 BC. Here is a layout of the first week. The seventh year of the week is indicated in red, because it was a sabbath year, according to the Lord's command in Leviticus 25:4.

From the issuing of the decree until the coming of the Anointed One, there were seven weeks and 62 weeks--a total of 69 weeks, or 483 (69 x 7) years. 457 minus 483 = -26; however, since there was no year 0, the 483rd year began in the spring of AD 27, rather than the spring of AD 26. Here is the layout of the 70th week.

The middle year of the week (30/31) is in bold to indicate the year Jesus was crucified, putting an end to the sacrificial system (Daniel 9:27).

Using this information, it is possible to determine where any year falls within the weekly cycle.

The Jubilee Cycles

It is nearly as easy to synchronize the jubilee cycles as it is to synchronize the weekly cycles, because there is a reference in the Bible to two consecutive sabbath years, which occurred only during the last two years of the cycle--the 49th and 50th. In Isaiah 37:30, the word of the Lord to king Hezekiah is,

"This will be the sign for you, O Hezekiah: This year you will eat what grows by itself, and the second year what springs from that. But in the third year sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit."

Compare that with Leviticus 25:6-7, 11-12:

"Whatever the land yields during the sabbath year will be food for you--for yourself, your manservant and maidservant, and the hired worker and temporary resident who live among you, as well as for your livestock and the wild animals in your land. Whatever the land produces may be eaten" (Leviticus 25:6-7). This is the land's seventh-year sabbath. In each jubilee cycle, the 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th, 35th, 42nd, and 49th years were seventh-year sabbaths.

"The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. For it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you; eat only what is taken directly from the fields" (Leviticus 25:11-12). This is the land's jubilee-year sabbath, which always followed the seventh ordinary sabbath--the 49th year.

In Isaiah 37:30, the word of the Lord described two consecutive years in which the people were not to plant and harvest but were to eat what grew by itself--the 49th and 50th years of the jubilee cycle.

From Isaiah 36:1, we learn that Hezekiah received this message in his 14th year. Since that year and the following year were to be years of rest for the land, Hezekiah's 14th and 15th years must have been the 49th and 50th years of a jubilee cycle, because these years were the only two consecutive years in which the land was to rest. We saw earlier that the spring of 457 BC to the spring of 456 BC was the first year of the weekly cycle, so we can count back by a multiple of 7 to determine Hezekiah's 15th year.

The Assyrian king Sennacherib began to reign around 705 BC, and he attacked Judah soon after. Counting backward 245 years (7 x 35) from 457/456 BC, we find that 702/701 BC was also the first year of the week. This puts Hezekiah's 14th year in the Sabbath year of 703/702 BC; and it tells us that 702/701 BC, being the second of two consecutive sabbath years, was also the first year of a new jubilee cycle.

Finding the Beginning of the Calendar

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, "This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year" Exodus 12:1-2. One year later... So the tabernacle was set up on the first day of the first month in the second year Exodus 40:17. These texts show that the calendar, with its mechanisms for marking off time, began at the time of the Exodus. The first day of the first month of the first year was just two weeks before the Israelites left Egypt.

We can determine when the jubilee cycles began, because the Bible gives a benchmark for finding the approximate date of the Exodus, and we can use what we already know of the cycles to narrow the Exodus to an exact date.

"In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites had come out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, the second month, he began to build the temple of the Lord" (1 Kings 6:1).

Because of the overlap in reigns from father to son, the precise years of Solomon's reign cannot be determined from the biblical chronology alone. However, the Bible states that the Exodus occurred during the first year of the first jubilee cycle, because that is when God gave the Israelites this system of keeping track of time (Exodus 12:1,2). Since the first year of one jubilee cycle (702 B.C.) is known, the exact year of the Exodus can be determined if the possible years can be narrowed to a range of fewer than 49 years. This can be accomplished by using the chronologies of kings.

In the 38th year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab son of Omri became king of Israel, and he reigned in Samaria over Israel 22 years (1 Kings 16:29). To compute the maximum number of years from the beginning of Solomon's reign until Ahab's death, add the "Years Reigned" in the column above, and subtract 3, because, although Asa reigned 41 years, Ahab began to reign during Asa's 38th year.

The total is 120. Since the date of Ahab's death can be reliably placed at 852 BC, the earliest arithmetically possible year for Solomon to have begun his reign is 972 BC.

If Solomon began to reign in 972 BC, his fourth year would have been 968 BC, and the Exodus would have occurred in 1448 BC. However, 1448 BC was not the first year of a jubilee cycle. The closest years were 1486 BC, 1437 BC, and 1388 BC.

1486 BC is too early, since that would require Solomon to have begun his reign in 1010 BC (1486 BC + 480 - 4). If that were true, there would have been 158 years from the beginning of Solomon's reign in 1010 BC to the death of Ahab in 852 BC; however, that the maximum number of years allowed is 118.

1388 BC is too late. If Solomon began to reign in 912 BC, there would have been only 60 years from the beginning of his reign until the death of king Ahab. This is impossible, since there were 60 years from the beginning of Asa's reign until the death of Ahab, and Asa didn't begin to reign until long after Solomon's death.