Text: 2 Chronicles 36:21
OT Text Referred to: Leviticus 26:34
Subject: land Sabbath fulfillment
Source: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Promise-Fulfillment
Significance: Leviticus 26:34 warns that in exile "the land will enjoy its Sabbaths (שַׁבְּתֹתֶיהָ, shabbetoteha)" — the rest it was denied during Israel's occupancy. 2 Chronicles 36:21 presents the Babylonian exile as the direct fulfillment of this warning: the land lay desolate "to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years." The Chronicler interprets the seventy-year exile as compensation for Israel's failure to observe the sabbatical-year land rest, treating the duration as precisely calculated from accumulated Sabbath violations. This is one of the OT's most explicit cases of a covenant curse (Leviticus 26) being identified as historically fulfilled.