Jeremiah’s 70-Year Prophecy 509 with the role of Babylon in the nation’s developing theology. Far from fearing to address the matter, it was central to the liturgical and intellectual discourse of the exilic period. 3. An Akkadian Antecedent from the Reign of Esarhaddon Bearing this in mind, we must turn our attention to an important inscription from the reign of Esarhaddon (681-669) that provides both a thematic and terminological antecedent to 70-year prophecy and atbash codes in the Jeremianic corpus. The inscription, dated to the 2nd year of Esarhaddon’s reign, is part of a flurry of texts emanating from that king’s court concerning his revolutionary diplomatic policies towards Babylon. The text in question deals with his program of rebuilding the civic and cultic infrastructure of Babylon shortly after he came to the throne: Before my time, in the reign of a previous king, in Sumer and Akkad there were evil omens. The people who lived there only conversed (by) “Yes! No!” lying words. They brought their hands to the furnishings of Esagila, Palace of the gods, and gold, silver, gems they turned over to Elam in commerce. Enlil of the gods, Marduk was furious. He devised evil plans to devastate the land, to eliminate its people. The Arahtu Canal, [...] mighty high water, the likeness of a devastating flood swept over the city of his dwelling, his chapel, and turned (it) to ruins. Gods and goddesses who lived there went up to heaven. The people who lived there went, appointed to the mob, into slavery. 70 years, the allotment for its abandonment, he wrote, but compassionate Marduk, his heart quickly relented and he turned (it) upside down. He declared its inhabitation in 11 years (22). (22) See R. BORGER, Die Inschriften Asarhaddons Königs von Assyrien (Archiv für Orientforschung, Beiheft 9; Graz 1967) 12-19. M. WEINFELD, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford 1972) 145-146, called attention to this Esarhaddon inscription when addressing the 70-year prophecy in Jer 25,11-12 and 29,10. However, Weinfeld’s analysis was limited by his view that the number 70 functioned in both texts simply as a generic numerical reference typical of the 7th-6th centuries, and his position that the prose of Jeremiah was the result of later Deuteronomistic editors, who “employed the numerical typology of the period, which appears to have been particularly employed by Mesopotamian scribes” (pg. 146). SOMMER, “New Light”, 661-662, and HOLLADAY, Jeremiah 2, 137-139, have demonstrated that Jer 29 cannot be considered part of a later Deuteronomistic redaction but is original to the prophet. Weinfeld’s analysis also does not account for the role of the atbash codes, which factor significantly into the hermeneutics of the Jeremianic passages under consideration and which detract from his position that the reference to 70 years was a stereotyped scribal device (see below).