This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.
Seventy years is a long time — long enough that most people hearing this prophecy wouldn't live to see it end. That's a hard thing to be told: your whole nation is about to fall apart, and no, it's not getting fixed in your lifetime.
There's something almost brutal about a timeline that specific. But there's also something oddly trustworthy about it. This isn't vague, wishful comfort — it's a number, a real claim that could actually be checked against history, which is exactly what later generations did.
If you're in a season that feels like exile — waiting for something to change that shows no sign of changing soon — this verse doesn't rush past that reality to get to a happy ending. It sits in the length of the wait. Sometimes the most honest hope isn't "it'll be fine tomorrow." It's "there's an end, even if you can't see it from here."
If the wait you're in has no visible end yet, could you sit with the idea that it still has one?
A short video on this is coming soon — for now, read on.