(married Esther)

Esther 2:17

Ahasuerus (Esther 1:1).

Artaxerxes (Ezra 6:14; Neh. 2:1).

Darius the Median (Dan. 5:31).

'The Persian' (Isa. 45:1; Ezra 6:14).

Cambyses 11.

Darius Hystaspes

Artaxerxes (Ezra 7:1).

As we are now dealing with Gentile kings and their chronology we must

go back a few years and make a new date line with the first year of

Nebuchadnezzar.  We learn from Daniel 1:1 that in the third year of the reign

of Jehoiakim came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem.  In the

fourth year of Jehoiakim (Jer. 25:1,9) Nebuchadnezzar arrived, and from this

date commences the seventy years of the servitude of the people.

This is the period referred to by Daniel when he said:

'I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word

of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that He would accomplish

seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem' (Dan. 9:2).

There is another period of seventy years that must be kept distinct and

that is seventy years of captivity which commenced in the eighth year of

Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 24:8 -16).  The Desolations, yet another period of

seventy years, commenced with the fall of Jerusalem and the last siege of

that city by Nebuchadnezzar, which fell in the eleventh year of Zedekiah

(Jer. 52:11).

The first year of Nebuchadnezzar we have seen is

the year 3521 from Adam, which we now turn into b.c. date for convenience and

call 496 b.c.  The date of the twentieth year of Artaxerxes (Neh. 2:1) is

ascertained as follows: