Twenty-Three Years of Warning and Seventy Years for Babylon

In the fourth year of Jehoiakim, Jeremiah looks back over twenty-three years of rejected prophetic warning. Because Judah would not turn, Nebuchadnezzar becomes God’s instrument of judgment and the land will serve Babylon seventy years. Yet Babylon is not absolved: after its appointed period, God will punish the empire for its own iniquity.