rally marked by the celebration of one of the great festivals in Jerusalem now first beginning to recover from its desolate condition. The preceding arrangement of the seventy years I prefer both to that of Ushier and to that of Prideaux. Usher, by reckoning from the supposed binding of Jehoiakim in the spring of the year A.C. 606 to the enacting of the deeree of Cyrus in the spring of the year A. C. 536, produces, no doubt, the sum of 70 years: but then he places the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar a year too early. Prideaux, on the contrary, places the capture of Jerusalem where it ought to be placed: but, in order to make up the sum of 70 years, he is obliged to throw forward the edict of Cyrus to the latter end of the year A. C. 536, that is to say, to the latter end of his first year instead of its beginning. This compels him to place the first feast of tabernacles in the Tisri of the year A. C. 535, or in the second year of Cyrus: whereas, as Abp. Usher rightly. judges, it manifestly appears from Ezra to have been celebrated in his first year, because no other year is mentioned *. In addition to their respective peculiar ✦ Ezra, after stating that the Jews began to return in the first year of Cyrus, tells us, that in the seventh month they gathered themselves together to Jerusalem; and this he tells us without specifying any other year than the first year of Cyrus. peculiar errors, these two arrangements appear to me to be equally faulty in making the seventy years terminate with the enacting of the decree of Cyrus. Josephus tells us, that the Jews began to return from Babylon in the seventieth year: therefore they began to return before the seventy years had fully expired; and therefore the years themselves must have expired after their arrival in Palestine, which is precisely what my hypothesis supposes them to have done. (3.) Mr. Having told us this, he immediately afterwards speaks of the second month of the second year of their coming to the house of God, thereby plainly intimating that another year had commenced. This being the case, the seventh month must have been in the first year of their coming to the house of God: and, since Ezra mentions this seventh month after speaking of the first year of Cyrus without specifying the commencement of the second year of that prince, the seventh month must be that seventh month which fell out in the first year of Cyrus. Compare Ezra i. 1. iii. 1, 8. *Joseph. Ant. Jud. lib. xi. cap. 1. § 1. It may be objected, that Jeremiah speaks of the seventy years being accomplish ed at or in Babylon, which, according to the present hypothesis, they were not (Jerem. xxix. 10.)—I reply, that the prophet here plainly speaks of the seventy years in the round language of familiar conversation: for, in perfect strictness of speech, the Jews were not in Babylon seventy years complete according to any interpretation. Those, who make this period terminate in Babylon with the enacting of the decree of Cyrus, make it commence in Palestine with the capture of Jerusalem. The se (3.) Mr. Marshall's third argument is deduced from the circumstance of the three years and a half being venty years however are the period of the desolation of Judah and Jerusalem, reckoned from the time when that desolation commenced to the time when it began to cease. Both the city and the country might be a considerable time in recovering from their desolate state; but the seventy years expired, when they began to recover: and no fixed era seems to mark this beginning more naturally and more definitely than the first celebration of one of the great festivals in the capital city after an interruption of many years and immediately after the arrival of the Jews in their own country. I have frequently wondered, that Dr. Prideaux should imagine, that Jeremiah's prophecy of the seventy years received a triple accomplishment in three different periods of seventy years each, when we are so plainly told in Scripture, that the instrument, which produced its accomplishment, was the decree of Cyrus, and when we are moreover informed, that, in the first year of Darius, shortly before the enacting of this decree, Daniel had calculated the seventy years to have nearly expired (See Ezra i. 1. and Dan. ix. 1, 2.). Such being the case, we surely have no right to look out for other imaginary accomplishments of the prophecy according to our own contriving. I perfectly agree with Dr. Blayney, that the two periods of seventy years each, mentioned in Zechar. i. 12, and vii. 5, have no sort of connection with the seventy years foretold by Jeremiah neither does Zechariah himself say any thing, which necessarily leads us to suppose that he alludes in either case to Jeremiah's seventy years (See Blayney's trans. of Jeremiah and Zechariah in loc.) One mischief, that has resulted from Dr. Prideaux's scheme of a triple accomplishment, is the applica being described as containing 1260 days, which is at the rate of 360 days to the year. Now three years and a half are a collective sum, and yet contain no more than 1260 days: hence he infers, that 490 years, being also a collective sum, ought to be estimated as containing no more than 490 times 360 days. I have already in part answered this argument by observing, that, if the ancient year used by the Jews consisted of 12 months of 30 days each and of 5 supernumerary days added at the end of the year and considered as belonging to none of the months; the year, when reckoned by months (as St. John reckons it*), must then be estimated as containing tion of the same principle to the prophecies which treat of the 1260 years. It has been argued, that, as the prophecy of the seventy years received different successive accomplishments, we may expect that the 1260 years have more than one era of commencement and termination. The conclusion might perhaps have been warranted from analogy, if the premises, whence it is drawn, had been well founded. But, since Ezra tells us that Jeremiah's seventy years expired in the first year of Cyrus, and since no intimation is given in Scripture that they likewise expired at other eras, I can consider the hypothesis of Dr. Prideaux in no other light than that of a mere gratuitous unproved assumption, and can never allow it to be the basis of an analogical argument. See Prideaux's Connect. Part i. B. iii. * Rev. xi. 2. no more than 360 days: consequently, if he ascribed 42 precise months to three years and a half, he must likewise ascribe to them 1260 precise days, because each of those months contained exactly 30 days and, in fact, such a mode of reckoning would naturally arise from the year being reputed to contain no more than 360 days. I may now further observe, that, if the ancient year of the Jews contained singularly no more than 360 days, and if the deficiency in collective sums were made up by intercalations; it is easy to conceive, from the arbitrary and irregular mode in which the Sanhedrim intercalated, that any given three years and a half, being a very short collective period, might really contain no more than 1260 days, while a longer collective period could not possibly have been suffered to roll on without being extended to its proper amount by the requisite intercalations. We can as little argue with certainty from a very short collective period into which no intercalation might be introduced, as we can from the amount of a single individual year. If Mr. Marshall could have shewn, that, not three years and a half, but 80 or 100 years, of 360 days each, had been suffered to elapse without any intercalary regulation, he would then indeed have adduced a most formidable argument. (4.) He further attempts to prove his point by pursuing another train of reasoning-In the time of Noah, |