¹¹ This whole country will become a desolate wasteland,^(A) and these nations will serve^(B) the king of Babylon seventy years.^(C)

¹² “But when the seventy years^(A) are fulfilled, I will punish the king of Babylon^(B) and his nation, the land of the Babylonians,^[a] for their guilt,” declares the Lord, “and will make it desolate^(C) forever.

² in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy^(A) years.

¹² Then the angel of the Lord said, “Lord Almighty, how long^(A) will you withhold mercy^(B) from Jerusalem and from the towns of Judah,^(C) which you have been angry with these seventy^(D) years?”

⁵ “Ask all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted^(A) and mourned in the fifth and seventh^(B) months for the past seventy years,^(C) was it really for me that you fasted?