Day-year Principle - Biblical Basis

Biblical Basis

Proponents of the principle, such as the Seventh-day Adventists, claim that it has three primary precedents in Scripture:

1. Numbers 14:34. The Israelites will wander for 40 years in the wilderness, one year for every day spent by the spies in Canaan.
2. Ezekiel 4:5-6. The prophet Ezekiel is commanded to lie on his left side for 390 days, followed by his right side for 40 days, to symbolize the equivalent number of years of punishment on Israel and Judah respectively.
3. Daniel 9:24-27. This is known as the Prophecy of Seventy Weeks. The majority of scholars do understand the passage to refer to 70 "sevens" or "septets" of years—that is, a total of 490 years. However, many non-historicist scholars do not see the day-year principle as being necessary for this interpretation, as "septet" is not the ordinary Hebrew word for the time period "week".

Jon Paulien has defended the principle from a systematic theology perspective, not strictly just from the Bible.