Footnote

a The “seventy years” of observing fasts could not have begun after the first deportation of the Jews by the Babylonians in the year 617 B.C.E., for that would have been about nine years before King Nebuchadnezzar began the final siege of Jerusalem and also about eleven years before the breaching of the walls of the city (on Tammuz 9) and the destruction of the city (on Ab 10) and the assassination of Governor Gedaliah in the seventh month (Tishri), these mournful events being observed by the fast periods. Hence the “seventy years” of fasting began after these last three mournful calamities had taken place, in the year 607 B.C.E. This proves that the desolation of the land lasted for seventy years and that these “seventy years” began in 607 B.C.E. and ended in 537 B.C.E.​—See Flavius Josephus’ book “Antiquities of the Jews,” Book 10, chapter 9, paragraph 7.