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490 (Four Hundred and Ninety)

Symbolic treatment of this number in the corpus by E.W. Bullinger and Stephen E. Jones.

Four hundred and ninety is the number of chronological perfection and blessed time: the product of seventy (universality) and seven (spiritual perfection), marking the great prophetic periods in salvation history. Bullinger identifies four successive periods of four hundred and ninety years in Israel’s history. Jones develops it as the “Law of Blessed Time”: the prophetic cycle of forgiveness and restoration measuring God’s patience with an obedient people.

Biblical References

Reference	Context
Gen. 4:24	Lamech: seventy times seven as a standard of retribution
Lev. 25:8	Seven sabbath years seven times: structure of ten jubilees (490 years)
Dan. 9:24	Seventy weeks determined upon Daniel’s people — 490 prophetic years
Matt. 18:22	Jesus: forgive seventy times seven — the Law of Blessed Time

Symbolism in the Corpus

E.W. Bullinger

Bullinger describes four hundred and ninety as 70 × 7: the combination of Israel’s national chastening (seventy) and spiritual perfection (seven). He identifies four periods of four hundred and ninety years in Israel’s sacred history: from Abraham to the Exodus, from the Exodus to the foundation of the Temple, from the Temple dedication to Nehemiah’s return, and from Nehemiah to the Second Advent. The seventy weeks of Daniel (Dan. 9:24) are the central biblical instance: forty-nine years of restoration, followed by four hundred and thirty-four years and a closing period of seven years — four hundred and ninety in all. ¹

Stephen E. Jones

Jones calls four hundred and ninety “Blessed Time” and formulates a prophetic law around it. He writes: “Jesus revealed what we call the ‘law of Blessed Time,’ which governs the patience, forgiveness, and grace of God. […] The number 490 is a period of ten Jubilees. This is the basic unit of measurement in long-range biblical prophecy. It occurs only three times in the Bible: Gen. 4:24, Matt. 18:22, and Dan. 9:24. Yet all of history is measured in Jubilees and 490-year periods, for this is the basis of God’s prophetic calendar.” Blessed Time describes the allotted time God grants to a people essentially obedient to his law: four hundred and ninety years of forgiveness, after which the account is settled. ²

In The Struggle for the Birthright (ch. 8), Jones cites Dan. 9:24-25 within a broader redemptive-historical argument about the rejection of Jesus and the transition toward the New Jerusalem. The seventy weeks of Daniel — four hundred and ninety years — marked for him the end of the prophetic-legal period of Israel’s atonement, forming the redemptive-historical boundary between the Passover era and the opening toward the eschatological order. ³

Composite Use

Both Bullinger and Jones treat four hundred and ninety as 70 × 7. For Jones the factorisation is hermeneutically developed: ten jubilees — each forty-nine chronological years — constitute a period of four hundred and ninety years, during which God forgives a people seventy times seven. The overlap of the fiftieth year with the first of the next cycle compresses the legal five hundred years into four hundred and ninety chronological years. ²

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Footnotes

1. Bullinger, Number in Scripture (4th ed. 1921). ↩

2. Jones, Secrets of Time. ↩ ↩²

3. Jones, SftB (The Struggle for the Birthright, ch. 8). ↩