Seventy Times Seven (Feb 10, 2026)
Peter thought he was being generous. The rabbis taught that you should forgive someone three times. Peter doubled that and added one for good measure.
“Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” (Matt. 18:21, ESV).
Jesus’s response must have stunned him:
“I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven” (Matt. 18:22, my translation).
The Greek phrase here is often translated “seventy-seven times,” but the literal reading is “seventy times seven.” The construction uses an adverb (ἑβδομηκοντάκις, “seventy times”) followed by the number seven (ἑπτά) with no conjunction between them—a grammatical pattern that indicates multiplication rather than addition. This reading unlocks a profound connection to Israel’s story that Jesus’s first audience would have immediately recognized.
The prophet Jeremiah had promised that Israel’s exile in Babylon would last seventy years (Jer. 25:11-12; 29:10). The people waited. They counted. When those seventy years ended, Daniel prayed for restoration (Dan. 9:2-3). But instead of announcing the exile’s end, the angel Gabriel delivered shocking news. The exile would not last seventy years but seventy weeks of years—seventy times seven, or four hundred ninety years (Dan. 9:24). Israel’s punishment had been multiplied because their sin remained unforgiven.
This background is what Jesus’s audience would have heard when he said “seventy times seven.” He was not merely telling Peter to forgive an impossible number of times. He was announcing that the long exile was finally over. The four hundred ninety years of waiting had come to an end. The age of forgiveness had arrived.
The parable that follows illustrates this new reality. A servant is forgiven an impossible debt—ten thousand talents, roughly two hundred thousand years of wages. Yet he refuses to forgive a fellow servant who owes him a mere hundred days’ wages. The king’s verdict is severe: the unforgiving servant loses everything.
Jesus’s warning is equally severe:
“So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart” (Matt. 18:35, ESV).
Those who have experienced the forgiveness that ends the exile cannot refuse to extend that same forgiveness to others. The vertical relationship with God and the horizontal relationship with our neighbor are inseparable. You do not get one without the other.
Jesus came to set the world to rights. Through his cross, he has forgiven our impossible debt. Now he calls us to participate in that great work of restoration by forgiving others as we have been forgiven. That sounds an awful lot like the Lord’s Prayer, doesn’t it?
Years ago, I truly struggled to forgive my own mother for the years of abuse she’d indicted on me and my sister. The Lord led me to this passage and showed me that, like this servant, I had been forgiven a HUGE debt I could never repay. He also showed me that I was doing a similar thing — I was trying to extract the debt I felt SHE owed me, forgetting the great debt I’d been forgiven by God! That freed me to go to my mom and offer forgiveness and to share with her this parable and and her forgiveness for trying to gain something from her she was unable to give