I was recently told that an excellent example of prophecy fulfillment in the Bible is the prophecy that the nation of Israel would be restored, as recorded in Ezekiel 4. If true, that would be a huge boost to the Bible’s credibility, so let’s dig in and see how it fares.
In Ezek 4:4-6, God tells Ezekiel to do the following:
4 “Lie also on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it. According to the number of the days that you lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity. 5 For I have laid on you the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days; so you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. 6 And when you have completed them, lie again on your right side; then you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days. I have laid on you a day for each year.”
A little context is probably in order. Ezekiel lived during the time that the nation of Judah was taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Much of his writings talk about the captivity that the Jews are under, and in this passage, he prophesies about when they’ll return from captivity. As the end of verse 6 says, each of these days represents one year.
The Case For This Being a True Prophecy
The person who pointed me to this prophecy gave this link as a good explanation of how this prophecy works, so I’ll be referring to its points throughout this post.
First, we take these two periods and add them together: 390 years for Israel + 40 years for Judah = 430 years.
Next, Babylon took Judah captive in 606 BCE for exactly 70 years leaving 360 years left to go. But how do we explain this leftover 360 years?
Well, it turns out that Leviticus 26 lays out all these conditions on the Israelites. There, God tells them that as long as they serve him faithfully, he’ll bless them. But if they don’t serve him faithfully, then he’ll punish them “7 fold” or “7 times” for their sins (Lev 26:18-33). So if we take those remaining 360 years and multiply them by 7, we get 2,520 years.
But we’re not done yet. We must remember that the Jews used a calendar based on both lunar and solar years. They had 12 30-day months and would occasionally add in leap-months as needed to keep the seasons lining up correctly. So to understand what Ezekiel meant by “year,” we need to convert these 2,520 years into days, which comes out to 2,520 x 360 = 907,200 days.
Now to find out how many actual years this represents, we need to convert back to the standard 365.25 day/year calendar that we use today. This comes out to 907,200 / 365.25 = 2,483.78 years.
We can finally connect all the dots:
606 BCE – 70 years = 536 BCE
-536 (since it’s BCE) + 2,483 + 1 (since there’s no year 0) = 1948 CE
And 1948 is the year that Israel was again made a nation! Furthermore, Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BCE, 19 years after he took Judah. And Jerusalem was restored to Israel in 1967 CE — exactly 19 years after they reclaimed the nation of Israel! So the numbers work out for Jerusalem as well!
So that’s the case for the prophecy being legit. But are there reasons to be skeptical?
The Case Against This Being a True Prophecy
There are actually a number of problems with what I laid out above, and those familiar with the Old Testament may have already seen them.
First of all, why should the years in Ezekiel’s prophecy be added together at all? Ezekiel says there will be 390 years for Israel and 40 years for Judah — it’s no accident that he separated them. According to Jewish tradition, all 12 tribes of Israel were united when they took the land of Canaan. They remained united through all 15 judges and through kings Saul, David, and Solomon. But after Solomon died, the nation split into two kingdoms: the nation of Israel, consisting of the northern 10 tribes, and the nation of Judah, consisting of the southern 2 tribes. So far, the archaeological evidence leans away from this story. It appears that Israel and Judah were never united into one large kingdom, but that’s outside the scope of this article, so we’ll leave it at that for now.
Israel was taken into captivity by the Assyrian Empire in 722 BCE. Many passages in later parts of the OT predict those lost tribes being restored, and it seems that this is what Ezekiel is referring to in this passage. That’s why they’re given a different period of time than Judah is — they were taken captive almost 150 years before Judah was. So it does not make sense to add these years together as though they refer to one specific thing. Israel and Judah were being dealt with separately here.
Secondly, the starting date of 606 BCE for Judah’s captivity isn’t accurate. In 606 BCE, Judah was its own kingdom, though it was a vassal state to Egypt and had been for 2 or 3 years. Egypt and Babylon were butting heads in the region during this time. Nebuchadnezzar came to the throne in 605 BCE, and he defeated Egypt at Carchemish that same year. That’s when Judah changed allegiance from Egypt to Babylon, as it was suddenly clear that they were now the most powerful force in the region. But it wouldn’t be appropriate to say they were under captivity at that time. They were still a separate kingdom that paid homage to Babylon. If we were to make the case that such a scenario equaled captivity, then Judah’s captivity would actually have begun in 609 or 608 BCE under Egypt.
In 601 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar tried to invade Egypt, but his forces were driven back, which caused several of the kingdoms in the Levant to rebel against him. Judah was one of them. In 599 BCE, Babylon besieged Jerusalem, and the city fell in 597 BCE. But at this point, Judah still retained its status as a vassal kingdom, and Nebuchadnezzar appointed Zedekiah as king. But several years later, Zedekiah revolted, aligning the kingdom with Egypt once again. This time, when Nebuchadnezzar took the city, he practically leveled it, and much of the population was taken off into captivity. This was in 587 BCE.
Considering this information, the most likely candidate to mark the beginning of Judah’s captivity is 587 BCE. Even if you try to push it back further, it’s hard to make a case for any time before 597 BCE, and this causes problems for the math that was laid out above.
One of the problems has to do with the 70 years of Babylonian captivity that was talked about above. When you were reading the above arguments, it may have struck you as odd that 70 years got subtracted for Judah’s captivity to Babylon, when Ezekiel said 40 years. The reason 70 was brought up is because of Jeremiah 29:10, where Jeremiah prophesies that Judah would be in captivity for 70 years. But that’s not what happened.
When the Persian Empire overthrew Babylon in 539 BCE, they allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem that same year (Ezra 1:1). The numbers differ depending on when you count Judah’s captivity as beginning, but this makes Judah’s captivity as few as 48 years (the more likely figure) or as many as 66 years. This again causes problems for all the equations that were used above.
There’s also the issue of multiplying the years by 7. There’s some discussion about whether the passage in Leviticus means that punishments would be multiplied by 7 years, or whether it would mean 7 separate punishments (like 7 additional plagues, etc). There’s also the issue that this kind of language is often taken to be more symbolic than literal. Furthermore, if this is how God was going to mete out the punishment, perhaps that’s already been calculated into the numbers he gives Ezekiel. Again, the passage has God say “a day for each year,” and there’s no indication that it should mean anything else. But I view those as side points.
The main problem I have is why does the multiplication of 7 only apply to 360 of the years? Why wouldn’t it have applied to all of them? So if we add the years together, and multiply by 7, we would have 3,010 years, not 2,520. Even if we continue to use 360-day years, that calculation comes out to 2,966.74 years, which puts us around the year 2431 CE. Of course, that isn’t helpful to those who want this prophecy to be true.
There’s another issue that should be mentioned as well. It turns out that the Septuagint doesn’t use the same figures as the Masoretic text. The Septuagint records Ezekiel 4:4-6 like this:
And thou shalt lie upon thy left side, and lay the iniquities of the house of Israel upon it, according to the number of the hundred and fifty days during which thou shalt lie upon it: and thou shalt bear their iniquities. 5 For I have appointed thee their iniquities for a number of days, for a hundred and ninety days: so thou shalt bear the iniquities of the house of Israel. 6 And thou shalt accomplish this, and then shalt lie on thy right side, and shalt bear the iniquities of the house of Juda forty days: I have appointed thee a day for a year.
It’s hard to say if 390 is the correct number, or if 150 is. Some people think that 150 is original, but that later scribes changed it once that amount of time had passed. But who knows? Unfortunately, there’s not a way to know which number is original to the text, which makes it very hard to base predictions upon.
Finally, the last piece of this that should be questioned is using a 360-day calendar. The Hebrew calendar was based on both the cycle of the moon as well as the solar year. Therefore, it is said that their calendar consisted of 12 30-day months, and every couple of years they would add a 13th month to keep the years aligned correctly with the seasons. But this isn’t exactly right. A lunar month follows the phases of the moon, which does not work out to 30 days exactly. Instead, it will alternate between 29 and 30-day months, meaning that the Hebrew calendar year came out to 354-355 days (or 385 days on leap years). This calls into question using a 360-day calendar to recalibrate the years in Ezekiel’s prophecy.
Furthermore, the Jews still understood that a year consists of 4 seasons (which is why they used intercalary years), so it seems bizarre to redefine “year” every time it’s used in prophecies. And it’s easy to see how big a 5.25 day variance can be. In the example at the beginning of this post, it took us from 2,520 years to 2,483.78 years. Daniel 12 and the Book of Revelation are the only places in the Bible I’m aware of that use a 360-day average in reference to a year. But I think it’s hard to argue that those references mean every time “year” is used in a prophecy it should be recalculated using 360-day years. Most calendars in the ancient world did not operate that way, and 360 days per year was a good generic estimate when referring to how many days are in a year at that time. Just as today we refer to a year as 365 days, when we realize that an extra day is needed every 4 years. That doesn’t mean when someone says something will happen in 20 years we have to recompute it to 19.98 years — we know they mean 20, regardless of how the leap years fall. I’m sure there are some Christians who would argue vociferously over the need to use 360-day “prophetic” years, but they have to. Without them, too much fails.
Conclusion
This was a really long post, and we’ve covered a lot of ground. I certainly can’t speak for everyone, but I personally do not find this prophecy to be a good example of a real prophecy. When taken at face value, Ezekiel talks about 390 years for Israel and 40 years for Judah. Neither of those figures work out correctly. Since they don’t, many different explanations have been sought after to make this prophecy point to something significant. The beginning of this post laid out one of those arguments, and on the surface, it seems pretty impressive. It gets us to the years 1948 and 1967 which are definitely important to the nation of Israel. But to get there, we’re making several sacrifices, like what year Judah went into captivity, adding the years together, multiplying some of them by 7, and converting the years to a 360-day format that almost certainly wasn’t the intent. And there’s still the issue of whether or not that translation is even accurate.
To me, this prophecy is simply too vague to be of any use. And the method used to create a connection to modern-day Israel is too problematic to be anything but evidence against prophecy-fulfillment, in my opinion.
Resources used in this article:
http://www.alphanewsdaily.com/mathprophecy2.html
http://www.theskepticalreview.com/JFTProphecyEzekiel4.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezekiel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Judah
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_%28587_BC%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebuchadnezzar_II_of_Babylon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_calendar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunisolar_calendar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_month
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophetic_Year
Finding Truth 
Hi Dan, thanks for the comment! I agree with your point, and it reminds me of what John Zande said earlier. I think that to view the prophecy as it was laid out at the beginning of my post stretches credibility in its tying together so many disparate passages and tweaking the numbers with suspect calculations.
I don’t know of any other passages where punishments have to be multiplied by 7. Daniel 9 does it, but only because he’s working to make Jeremiah’s 70 years prophecy point to what was happening in his own time. While the Book of Daniel portrays the character of Daniel as living during the time of Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus, the majority of scholars agree that this was a bit of historical fiction. The Book of Daniel gets a number of details wrong (such as saying that Nebuchadnezzar took captives from Jerusalem in 606 BCE, but there are far more), and textual evidence also indicates that it was written sometime around 167 BCE. Because there were around 400 years between the time of Nebuchadnezzar and the writer of Daniel, he transforms Jeremiah’s 70 years prophecy into a “70 weeks of years” prophecy, which comes out to 490 years. A time much closer to the time period he was “prophesying” about, when Antiochus Epiphanes was in power, reigning from Jerusalem.
I have an old article about this here, if you’re interested. I did not write it, but had permission to repost it.
Thanks again for your comment!
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When have any limits to a conversation ever stopped you? And I didn’t place limits on this anyway. When you brought this prophecy up, I told you that it was too detailed to get into in that thread, so I moved it to its own post. This comment section is here to allow you to say whatever’s on your mind. If you want to talk about 1967, go for it.
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I don’t recall saying you had Limited it Nate but whether you like it or not your article was premature because you didn’t and haven’t addressed all of it before coming to your conclusions. Maybe thought that was all to it because Mr till thought so? Or knew what you were going to come to regardless? I don’t know
seemed odd is all so I posted it. Like you have said I don’t stop speaking my mind.
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“…Nate but whether you like it or not your article was premature because you didn’t and haven’t addressed all of it before coming to your conclusions.”
of course he didnt. He needs 5 more semesters of calculus before it all really makes sense.
God’s word is so simple… detailed… er, those dont seem like the right words, so I’ll just say “there.”
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Just trying to understand… If you take every 7th year (sabbath year) out of 430 years you get about 61 years taken away. Is that not how it works?
Thanks,
Dan
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“Just trying to understand… If you take every 7th year (sabbath year) out of 430 years you get about 61 years taken away. Is that not how it works?’
NO not how I read it. they are two different things. Just because there was years of sin doesn’t mean in that time the land would not have rested. the 7o year period is supplied to us from multiple texts not derived from the 430 years. Its a good question though
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“of course he didnt. He needs 5 more semesters of calculus before it all really makes sense.”
If you are telling me it takes you five classes to figure out how to subtract 70 from a number and then multiply it by 7 and then 360 then I’ll believe you.
to your whole barf it should be simple – if its one thing we know about this universe its that it is HIGHLY mathematically ordered. it should not be surprising at all if an intelligence is behind it he would have some maths involved in his revelations somewhere
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Oh, and it’s all so clear. Here’s how you do it:
Wait until an important event happens. Then scour the Bible for any way that will let you manipulate the numbers into what you need. If the order of operations doesn’t work, then change them around until you get it right! Numbers that throw off the calculation? Disregard them!
And that, my friend, is how you rightly divide the word.
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” Numbers that throw off the calculation? Disregard them!
And that, my friend, is how you rightly divide the word”
What happened Nate? Getting kind of shrill. Is it because you are realizing that the whole 605 BC thing will not matter squat when it comes to the 1967 calculation. TIll didn’t tell you about that? No numbers are disregarded . Theres a multiplication of seven commanded in the torah the years designated in Ezek and and the 70 years cutoff by Daniel.
Sorry Nate all there and waiting for the 1967 part of the calculation. Rev locks int he 360 day year as being in prophetic use and the end.
605 BCE gone – not an issue
want to claim the Jews just magically corrected the numbers to the right count because Till told you the septaugint was right? Fine. maybe even more divine action given the statistical likelihood of that
Whats left. What other excuse do you have?
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What excuse do I have? Surely you’re joking. I’m aware of how people get to 1967 — it still involves the same magic math, even though you don’t need the 606 BCE date. I really have nothing else to add beyond what’s been said.
This is so far from what the average person would consider a clear, logical prophecy fulfillment that I’m surprised you brought it up
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“I really have nothing else to add beyond what’s been said.”
Yeah thats what I thought. TIll didn’t cover it and You can’t fall back on the only thing you had going in the 605 BC date so the Macarena and handwaving would start because the calculation NAILS the 1967 date for the retaking of Jerusalem using very well accepted dates.
Thats the great thing Nate. Whenever I see you start doing your flubbing around I know even you know your Hack job article’s been busted.
“This is so far from what the average person would consider a clear, logical prophecy fulfillment that I’m surprised you brought it up ”
LOL…You must think this is my first rodeo presenting this.if you think you can fool me with that hueeey. I’ve seen the average person’s reaction to these facts and you be lying. You keep begging and pleading. Ton loads of “average people” HAVE seen through all the nonsense skeptics pull with this one and see a calculation system that both fixes the time of Christ in Daniel 9, and the years of 1948 and 1967
and they can figure out the statistical odds.
No wonder you left the second half out of your article
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It’s funny to me that you bring this up. I noticed a while back that your claims of victory get louder and more demonstrative whenever your evidence is the weakest. It’s a bizarre trait, but you’re very consistent in the way you do it. Oddly, your best points don’t include all the rhetoric.
Anyway, my intent is not to persuade you — I realize there’s no chance of that. I’m only writing for the objective people who may be reading. If I feel like you bring up a point worth talking about, I’ll engage.
All the best.
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“It’s funny to me that you bring this up. I noticed a while back that your claims of victory get louder and more demonstrative whenever your evidence is the weakest. ”
Of course nate. You cant touch the dating on the 1967 part of the calculation but thats made my argument weaker. ROFL.
No wonder you hide out on your blog with your rubberstampers. Anyone else would see the stupidity of your claim
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@TBlacksman
It’s clear that you’re so deep in your noisy delusion that you can’t even comprehend just how “stupid” you actually appear; presenting such nonsense and, pricelessly, doing your own back-slapping. It’s entertaining, in a sad and pathetic way.
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And this is why, on this forum, all but Kathy and SOM regard you as imbecilic.
Even Habermaas, Licona and Craig offer better, more reasoned arguments than you and as apologetic as those three are they would toss you aside like the cheap, unprincipled and ignorant trash that you are , Mike.
You are an embarrassment even to apolgetics.
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” It’s entertaining, in a sad and pathetic way.”
and perhaps in that, a moment of vague shared familiarity of experience. you get a glimpse into my bemusement when reading your substance less attempts at rhetoric. 🙂
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“And this is why, on this forum, all but Kathy and SOM regard you as imbecilic”
And they be good company to be esteemed in rather than the sad company who among them has One named Ark who cannot count verse numbers and stands clueless that there are no verse break downs in Greek manuscripts.
Better to be considered normal among the wise than to be cherished as smart among fools. The first is a compliment and the latter a derisive state of man.
When Nate handwaves and sputters that is one good sign of my point but when the Ark poors forth spittle and foam like a Pepi bottle shaken for hours (rather than the usual sow ooze) –
You know you have hit the mark 🙂
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And this is why, on this forum, all but Kathy and SOM regard you as imbecilic.
Apparently SOM missed the part where he and Kathy were trashing his beloved RCC. Or maybe it’s a case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
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Well, if you find any normal among the apologetics you keep company with….please write and let us know, okay? There’s a good boy.
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SO in review let us summarize what the snivellers now consider to be their golden point (all others having evaporated). Its basically that in a universe intertwined with mathematics what has been presented is either too complicated for their simple minds (how confused would they be seeing the maths the same God used in the universe 🙂 or allegedly the numbers are contrived.
Pretty much another Nate Fail
because the seventy is most definitely not a contrived number and is involved in two different calculations – nailing the coming of Christ in one (and using the same multiplication of seven no less) and nailing 1967 and 1948 as the end of that punishment phase. Sorry chaps. Further the “70” and its subtraction is demanded since Both leviticus and Jeremiah indicate repentance and forgiveness is granted to one set of jews after that time period AND the return of blessing is promised Post those 70 years to the forgiven.
Whats left? the years of sin supplied by the text and multiplied by seven as demanded by the Torah. Ooooh thats so difficult and twisted in its maths eh? However will you grasp it without five courses in calculus according to Will boy.
There is the hand waving of calendar to be used I guess but since the bible provides us without a shadow of a doubt a 360 day year calendar in prophecies that objection is pretty much toast.
Perhaps you can raise some other point the above objections being so easily dismissed. After all I only post to see what you can come up with. May as well give me my money’s worth – or since I paid nothing you thought the same would be required in reply?
At the very least one thing is clear. My point about Nate’s poor scholarship articles have been proven yet again. Who writes an article that doesn’t cover the whole issue (even though he ALLEGES he knows how the 1967 number is come to and tht the date he harps on is not 605 BC for that)? Answer is simple – Someone who does and wants to do a hack job.
However since the dearly departed Till does not cover that part either I guess Nate was out of source material. WIkipedia wouldn’t come to the resource. That might be the explanation – but that would only prove my point as well.
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“Well, if you find any normal among the apologetics you keep company with….please write and let us know, okay?’
Will do. I am sure they all know maths and can teach you how to count as bonus. Shucks they will surely be able to show you pictures of Greek manuscripts with no verse numbers
Shock your pants off. 🙂
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“Apparently SOM missed the part where he and Kathy were trashing his beloved RCC. Or maybe it’s a case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
Apparently you are still having deep problems with coming up with substantive points. 🙂
I’d be shocked If SOM did not know protestants have some issue with Roman Catholicism particularly as relates to the past. I wouldn’t expect someone who has never been a Christian to understand the nuances though.
And where was this “trashing” I did? Wouldn’t want to be caught in another lie would you?
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@Mike
Did it give you a warm and tingly feeling believing you were the only one that knew the MS had no verse numbers? Really?
Such a little scholar you are.
Let’s see if teacher can find you a gold star and a tack to pin it on?
Will the middle of your forehead be okay? So’s all the other kiddies in Junior Bible Class can see?
Good, there you go. Now, run along and play, and remember…Jesus wants you for a sunbeam, Mike. And h is watching you, Mike so….no touching, all right?
Good boy.
Just you go count those verse one more time, okay?
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“Did it give you a warm and tingly feeling believing you were the only one that knew the MS had no verse numbers? Really?”
No but laughing at someone who didn’t does tend to warm the face
“Such a little scholar you are.
Let’s see if teacher can find you a gold star and a tack to pin it on?’
After the summer beak when school resumes could you ask your teacher for me then? Adults like myself have to go looking for them and its a pain.
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Oh, I’m sorry, Mike. I thought Yeshua was your teacher? Did he throw you out of class and give you detention for being such an unchristian obnoxious twat? Oh, dear.
Well you can put the time to good use and count those verses..again. There’s a good boy.
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