480 Years after Exodus
480th year after Exodus happened during the reign of king Solomon. Happened from 2463 FC to 2943 FC (1505 BC – 1025 BC | 480 yrs).
Why we chose that time?
Since we now have a bridge over the time in Egypt, we can tie people’s lives to it and fill in some of the gaps. The generations of Levi have no dates for the births of the children, but they do have ages in Exodus 6:16-20 which allow us to get a general idea of when they lived – you can pencil your best guesses in on Levi, Amram, and the rest if you like. Just be sure you make a notation that this is an educated guess, not a proven fact.
Back to proven facts, we know Moses was 80 years old and Aaron was 83 at the Exodus (Exodus 7:7). So we can subtract their ages from the time of the Exodus and know when they were born. Their deaths are recorded in Deuteronomy 34:7, Numbers 33:38-39, respectively. Draw that all that in.
They entered the Promised Land shortly after Moses’ death, 40 years after the Exodus (Joshua 1:1-2), so go ahead and draw a 40-year line and title it “Wilderness”, and then a vertical line at the 40 year mark for “Promised Land”.
After the entry to the Promised Land, dating gets very murky and complicated. There is information there, but sorting it out is an exercise in hair-pulling, so we will save that for another lesson. Working it out now would bog us down too much, so we’re going to use another bridge to skip over this period for now.
For the next 500 years or so Israel was ruled by a system of judges, with a loose, decentralized government. This is all contained in the book of judges and the first few chapters of Samuel; then we came to Saul, then David, then Solomon.
With Solomon we have a bridge, for in 1 Kings 6:1 we have a solid connection of 480 years back to the Exodus (not the entry to the Promised Land, but the Exodus). At this time, it was Solomon’s 4th year of reigning. This is a very clear, unambiguous scripture. And you know the rule – clear scripture interprets unclear, not the other way around.
Unfortunately, in Acts 13:17-21, Paul gives us a completely different story that appears to contradict this scripture. If you add up all the time periods Paul mentions, you come up with a period of 573 years from the Exodus to the building of the temple. Clearly, we have a problem.
But again – what are we assuming? If you read it closely in many translations (RSV, BBE, etc.), it doesn’t even make sense as it reads, not even with 573 years – for it says that God
- Put up with them in Egypt, and led them out
- Dealt with them in the wilderness 40 years
- Then gave them their land for an inheritance for about 450 years
- AFTER THAT gave them Judges (thus, all the judges were in addition to the 450 years (BBE, RSV, etc. – KJV doesn’t translate it this way)
- Then Samuel the prophet
- Then 40 years of Saul
- Then David (who reigned 40 years)
- Then Solomon (whose 4th year brings us to the construction of the temple)
That is how it literally looks, and if you add all that up as it reads, you could come up with over 1,000 years, which is obviously wrong. However, always remember – CLEAR scriptures first! We KNOW how clearly it said “480 years after the Exodus, Solomon built the temple”. That is our guide! There are no assumptions, no room for interpretation; it should take a powerful stack of proofs to move us from the conviction that it was 480 years from the Exodus to the temple!
And yet Acts 13 is also true and inspired by God. However, it IS vague; it contains MANY latent assumptions. MUCH room for interpretation. What’s worse, different versions read differently. For example, your Bible may not imply #4 above; but if you look this up in several different translations, you will notice that the phrase “about 450 years” moves around the sentence in each translation, changing the meaning of the verse each time! That alone should make you cautious about putting too much trust in your understanding of this verse!
If you read the commentaries, you will see that the interpretation of this passage is hotly debated. Bottom line, there is no known solution that does not require stretching this scripture to the limit, or else deleting the other one. I don’t like that, but that’s the way it is. There are ways of interpreting this scripture that minimize the difficulty, but none that I am certain are correct.
I will present the options and let you choose for yourself which, if any, you like. But never forget – we HAVE a clear answer, in 1 Kings 6:1. Acts 13 must be made to fit IT, not the other way around, for Acts 13 is hazy and difficult to translate. 1 Kings 6:1 is not hazy – it is plainly stated. So, other ways of interpreting Acts 13:17-20 include...
1. The period did not begin with the Exodus, as it appears, but rather “when God chose our Fathers”, which, if you started counting with Isaac (though there is no real reason to start with him), comes out close to (sort of) 450 years between Isaac and the Exodus. But when you back up and look at what Paul was trying to say, this has no bearing on the subject and there is no indication whatsoever that this is the right intent. This is the world’s best guess, and as you can tell, I don’t like it.
2. That “All these things” is better placed elsewhere in the sentence. Languages sometimes do quirky things and this is at least plausible, and glancing at different translations will show that they aren’t sure where this really belongs in the sentence.
If #2 is correct, the translation might read “And all these things [from the Exodus to David] took ABOUT [this word is definitely in the Greek] 450 years. Then God found David...” Yes, this is a slight stretch, but not beyond the bounds of possibility, and it is at least in line with the intent of Paul’s statement.
If true, this solves our problems much more neatly, for if you add 450 years to David’s 40 years of rule, and then Solomon’s 4th year, you wind up with 493 years to the construction of the temple – only off by 13 years. And Paul did clearly say “about” 450 years – not exactly 450 years.
So go ahead and put down 480 years from the Exodus to Solomon’s 4th year. Then back up 4 years and start Solomon’s reign there, and draw a line 40 years long to the right to represent Solomon’s rule (1 Kings 11:42). Then make a small vertical line up on the left of Solomon’s line and connect him to David, and draw a 40 year line for David. Then another line above and left for Saul for 40 years.
